Symphony of Sound
by harassed
Summary: [AUish, Sorato] She's cynical, distracted, clumsy, and too damn smart for her own good. She's just trying to get through life without any incidents, and maybe there's someone there to help her through it. [UPDATED]
1. Chapter 1

**Symphony of Sound: One**

"Sora?"

She sighed and turned back to the kitchen. "Hai?"

"I need you to work today," Takenouchi Toshiko looked at her daughter helplessly. "Ayumi called to say she couldn't come in."

"Fire her," Sora replied automatically, brushing her bangs away from her face with the back of her hand.

"I wish I could," her mother replied. "I'll see you after school."

"Bye." Sora walked to the door, picked her keys off the hall table, and shoved her arms into the sleeves of her black wool pea coat, quickly buttoning the front with long, nimble fingers and wrapping a grey flannel scarf around her slender neck. She exited the apartment quickly, before her mother could ask anything more of her.

**X**

She had figured that things would always stay the same. She would always be the one with the ripped jeans, the tattered soccer shoes, the cheekbone-length bangs, and the thick auburn hair that never seemed long enough for a ponytail. She would always be the tomboy, the girl with the stick-like figure, the girl never pretty enough to date, the girl who loved soccer more than she loved mirrors.

She had counted on Taichi and Yamato to be her best friends for all time, for Mimi to remain her soul sister, and for Jyou and Koushiro to always be there as support. She hadn't counted on Hikari or Takeru for anything; they had only been eight at the time, and guaranteed to change.

She had also thought they would be in Odaiba forever.

Some things had changed, and some hadn't. She was still the girl with the ripped jeans, tattered sneakers, and the cheekbone-length bangs. Now, her cheekbones were higher but her bangs were longer (to compensate), her auburn hair had finally grown out to past her shoulders, she was slender and had slim curves, and now she loved tennis more than she loved mirrors.

Mimi was still her soul sister (in all senses of the words, literal and figurative), Jyou and Koushiro were still always there when she needed to talk or needed help with differential equations or pathogenic microbiology (or both…), and Hikari and Takeru had been true to her, changing enormously, at least physically.

Hikari was still the sweet girl she had been at the age of eight, and hair was still short and shaggy, the ends barely grazing the collars of her shirts, with the bangs that she pinned back with large pink clips. She had grown taller, but by no means was she of an impressive height. She loved photography, she still had her sweet laugh, and she loved to help Sora in the flower shop if she had free time.

Takeru had become a bit more outgoing, a bit more hormonal, and a lot taller. His hair was still the same length, still choppy, still tawny-blond, still generally under a hat. His eyes still crinkled in the corners when he laughed, and he was starter for the school basketball team. He also had raging hormones and an immense crush on Yagami Hikari.

Yamato was Yamato, and Taichi was Taichi, and when Sora thought about it, nothing much had changed with either of them, besides the changes expected from puberty. Yamato was still brooding and musically talented, still amazingly blond and blue-eyed, though taller, less argumentative, and even quieter, if that was possible. Taichi was still loud, rambunctious, and a soccer freak (though sans the goggles), though also taller, less prone to accidents, and a bit more apologetic.

They weren't in Odaiba, though. All of the Digi-destined had picked up and moved to New York City, though by no choice of their own.

The Yagami family had been the first to move. As soon as the "digital incident," as the parents liked to call it, had come to an end, Taichi and Hikari's mother and father took all their money from the bank, packed up all their clothes, and moved out.

Yamato and Takeru had moved separately, to the chagrin of the concerned older brother. Originally, their mother had planned on staying in Los Angeles with Takeru, while Yamato lived in New York with their father, but after many arguments, fights, and all out battles, the family was reunited in New York.

Sora's mother had picked up and moved to Tokyo, initially. After living in a small, cramped flat (because they couldn't find any other accommodations), they had moved to New York also. Sora's mother had opened up a flower shop, which was doing better than excellent, and they lived in a spacious apartment. Sora's father, who had moved to the States earlier to teach at Stanford University, had opted to stay in California.

Sora hadn't expected anything more of him.

Mimi had moved to the City soon after, after crying and yelling herself hoarse for three weeks straight, refusing to eat until they moved so that she could be close to her real friends.

Jyou and Koushiro had followed, and they were all reunited in school. Koushiro, being the genius of the bunch, had skipped to junior year to be with the majority of group, and Jyou was a senior, heading off to Duke University the next year.

Takeru and Hikari attended a junior high school a few blocks from the high school.

Sora had hated it at first. She had learned English back in Odaiba, but she deplored her Japanese accent, and after many late night sessions, had perfected her speech, with only the slightest hint of an inflection.

She'd hated the classes, hated that she had been forced to take French I because she was fluent in Japanese, but Mimi and Yamato had played dumb and allowed to take Japanese III. She'd hated the lockers, her initial inability to talk to anyone.

She'd gotten over it. They all had.

And now they were here. Seasoned city-goers, relatively native New Yorkers, and she could hail a cab like no other.

It was home.

Or as close as it would get.

**x**

"Hey."

Sora jumped a mile, knocking the dial of her combination lock off the right number, and swore. "Fuck."

"Tired?" Ishida Yamato leaned down and peered at her, and Sora smacked him away quickly and began spinning her combination again.

"It's nothing," she snapped, popping her locker open and swearing again and yelping when two books fell out and landed on her right foot.

"Well done, Sora-chan," Yamato said, smiling, as he bent down to pick the books up. Sora took the old differential equations text and shoved it into the tattered messenger bag slung over her right shoulder and brushed a lock of hair behind her shoulder.

"Thanks, Yama."

The blond frowned at the nickname and shoved her lightly in the shoulder, and Sora took a step back, giving him a small half-smile and holding her hands up defensively. She zipped up her bookbag, dropped it on the floor, and slammed her locker shut. Leaning against the lockers, she slid to the floor and looked up at Yamato expectantly.

He looked down at her and blinked once, twice. A sweet, mischievous half-smile spread across his face and, much to her annoyance, he kept standing. Her neck hurt from looking up for such a long time, but she couldn't stop; she didn't want to stop.

He was perpetually intense, whether it was deliberate or accidental, but his eyes flared and brightened and dimmed and darkened as his mood did, going from azure to cerulean to sapphire all in turn, sometimes to cobalt or Prussian blue, but they were pretty, pretty, pretty. His thick, straight hair was that perfect shade of natural, healthy gold, spiky and wild, with random strands falling onto his forehead and over his eyes.

Her eyes strayed from his broad shoulders to the slope of his slim hips, and she followed his long legs down to the ancient Reebok sneakers on his feet, which were covered by the tattered hems of his too-long, loose-fitting but not-too-baggy jeans.

He was wearing a very nice ensemble comprising a white long-sleeved undershirt and a dark brown tee with a worn logo across his chest in small, tan print.

He smelled pretty damn good also, woodsy and spicy and comforting.

He ran his fingers through his perpetually messy blond hair and waved his hand in front of Sora's face.

"Sora?"

She blinked a few times and rubbed her eyes before fixing him with a stare. "What?"

"You…" He paused. "Never mind."

There was momentary silence.

"You didn't come to the movies with us yesterday."

"Ayumi's a bitch. I'm working again today."

The final bell rang. He smiled slightly and held his hand out to help her up. She ignored it and hoisted herself to her feet.

"You know," he said, as they made their way down the hall, him with his pencil behind his ear and notebook under his arm and her with her messenger bag hanging from her shoulder and her five-subject notebook hugged against her flat stomach, "you didn't answer my question."

"Which one?"

"Tired?"

Sora looked up at him and rolled her pretty crimson eyes. "Immensely, Yama."

**x**

"Sooooooooraaaaaa!"

The redhead groaned and pushed the blue math book back into her locker, hoping dearly that her hair wasn't out of place or something silly like that.

She turned around to greet Mimi, and was enveloped in a huge raspberry-scented hug.

"I didn't see you all weekend!" Mimi exclaimed, watching as Sora put her books away and reloaded her bag.

"I was working," Sora replied, digging into the pockets of her jeans, pulling out a five-dollar bill, and putting it away.

"Ayumi was sick?"

"Quote, unquote."

"Naturally." Mimi tousled her honey-brown hair absentmindedly, watching Sora as the auburn-haired girl rummaged around in her locker, searching for some loose change. "Are you working again today?"

"Sorry," Sora said apologetically, coming up with two quarters and a few dimes. "Is Ayumi here today?"

Mimi nodded, rolling her gorgeous hazel-slash-brown eyes and smoothing her hair away from her face. "You wouldn't believe how sick she looked in biology. Quote, unquote."

Sora laughed and grabbed her text of T.S. Eliot's _The Wasteland_, stuffing it into her messenger bag, which sat on the floor.

"Liplocking with – "

"Mimi, please, I don't care," Sora said quickly. "School's over, and I'm not going to think about her if I don't have to."

Mimi nodded understandingly and adjusted the large pearls of the necklace hanging around her slender neck so that it hung in such a way that she made it look like haute couture, and not something she had picked out at the mall on whim.

Sora envied her friend for that. She'd never really had interest in being trendy or fashionable or even pretty, but when she was around Mimi, she felt grossly inferior and far less pretty than she was.

Here was Mimi, resplendent in her black dress pants and pale pink off-the-shoulder top and stiletto heels that matched her shirt and purse, and her pearl necklace and matching earrings and bracelets, her immaculate makeup and perfect hair. Perfect was the word to describe her best friend, and Sora couldn't help but feel a little jealous.

Here she was, wearing her slightly faded denim flares with the tattered, ripped bottoms, a dark grey long-sleeved T-shirt that, granted, fit her slim form very nicely, the three silver piercings in each ear, and her hair was pulled back into a haphazard ponytail that probably wasn't even centered at the nape of her neck. She wore no makeup, and she sure as hell wasn't wearing nice shoes. Instead, on her feet were a pair of ancient Reebok sneakers, her lucky shoes that helped her win all of her tennis games.

Mimi was pretty, Sora was the tomboy, Mimi got all the boys, and Sora was content to be an observer, a bystander.

Those were the roles they had fallen into since their fateful meeting at summer camp. Mimi, of course, would drag Sora to the mall and wheedle and plead until Sora tried some ridiculous ruffled shirts or impossibly short skirts on, and then she would come close to tears when Sora run off to the sports store to look for a new tennis racket or buy another can of tennis balls.

"Sora-chan! Mimi-chan!" a voice called down the hall. Mimi's face lit up and she beckoned the person over, and Sora turned to look.

Yagami Hikari ran down the hall to them, her chestnut hair coming loose from one of the large pink clips holding back her bangs, and her smile wide.

"Are you busy now?" she asked breathlessly, coming to a halt in front of the two juniors.

"I'm not," Mimi said, "but Sora has to work."

Sora groaned and pulled her coat on, wrapping her scarf around her slender neck and slamming her locker shut.

"Do you mind if I help?" Hikari asked, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

Sora laughed and pulled her into a brief one-armed hug. "I love you, Hikari. You can come, but don't you have other things to do?"

Hikari shook her head, and her pretty hair caught the light. "I finished my homework in class (why they won't move me up to pre-calculus is beyond me), and you can help me on English if I come to the shop."

Sora rolled her eyes but couldn't help smiling. Hikari was just too cute.

"Are you sure?" The redhead nudged Hikari in the side and nodded to their right, where Takeru stood by the doors, obviously waiting for her.

A light pink blush stained the apples of Hikari's cheeks when the blond boy waved and yelled her name.

"Go," Mimi said, prodding her in the small of her back. "Hang out with him. Forget the flower shop. If Sora wants help, I'll give it to her."

Hikari bowed quickly, muttered a quick _arigatou_, and ran off to Takeru.

"She's cute," Mimi said, smiling.

Sora laughed and nodded, wiggling the strap of her messenger bag and walking a bit faster. "Are you really going to come and help?"

"I will if you want me to," Mimi said staunchly, offering a winning smile, and Sora nodded.

"Haven't seen Taichi all day. He wasn't even in English."

"He's sick today," Mimi informed her, whipping out her pink cell phone and showing her the text message he had sent her during lunch. "Hikari gave him the flu she had last week."

"She had the flu last week?" Sora asked absentmindedly. "Wait. Why didn't Taichi text me?"

"You never look at your messages," Mimi pointed out, pulling Sora's cell from her back pocket and flipping it open. "Look at that…ten new messages…and most of them are from Yamato, oh la la."

"Shut up," Sora said, snatching her phone back and snapping the lid shut.

"Sora, come on, tell your mom that you don't want to work today. She'll understand, won't she? She has those two other women to help her." Mimi put her hand on Sora's forearm and looked at her seriously. "We could go to the mall…" she offered, smiling wickedly.

Sora laughed. "Well, that clinches it," she said wryly. Still the cell phone came out of her pocket, and she held down three to speed dial her mom.

"Mama? Is it okay if I don't come today?" Sora paused and rolled her eyes. "I know, but Mimi wants to hang out. She's having a minor crisis and I told her I'd help her out." Another pause. "What? Oh, she can't find a dress for the spring formal and she wants me to go to the mall with her so I can help her pick out a dress."

After a few seconds, Sora smiled beatifically and snapped her phone shut. "She said fine."

Mimi squealed and wrapped her arms around Sora, then quickly linked her elbow through her's and marched her off.

"Since I do need a dress for spring formal, and I really do need a second opinion, I guess we'll actually being doing what you told your mom."

Sora groaned loudly and tried to release herself from Mimi's grasp.

Her best friend held onto her tight, chattering cheerfully and smiling beautifully, and eventually Sora gave up struggling because she realized that there really wasn't another place she wanted to be.

Going to the mall with Mimi was just fine with her.

**A/N: More to come. Reviews make me smile.**


	2. Chapter 2

I own nothing. That applies to the first chapter also.

**Symphony of Sound: Two**

There was an average of fifty petals per carnation.

Sora sat at the cash register of the flower shop, a Hello Kitty mechanical pencil twirling idly between two long, slim fingers, and surrounded by green stems and piles of carnation petals.

Fifty petals per carnation. She wondered if that was true for roses.

Sato Ayumi walked out, her razor-sharp stiletto heels clicking on the tile floor, a nail file in her hand, and her pitch-black hair looking perfect, as usual. Tight, dark jeans and a skimpy white tank top, under a cropped denim jacket that matched her pants, fairly clung to her slim form.

_She_, Sora thought wryly, _is the only reason everyone at school thinks that Japanese girls are all geisha_.

"Are we ready close up yet?" she asked, stopping her filing to scrutinize her cuticles.

"I'm going," Sora said, standing up and sweeping the petals into the garbage can under the table. "You're closing up today."

Ayumi pouted and flipped her hair over her shoulder, looking at Sora with pleading eyes.

"I can't close today, Takenouchi-chan…"

"Yes, yes you can, Sato-san," Sora replied, putting her pencil and notebook back into her messenger bag and lifting the school bag onto the counter. "I have homework to do, and I've already worked an extra hour, _and_ I've been working extra to make up for the time that _you've_ taken off because you're sick."

The word sick was joined by finger quotation marks in the air. Sora quickly undid the ties at her neck and back of the flower shop apron and slung her bag over her shoulder. Walking around the counter, she tossed Ayumi a simpering smile and sauntered off to the back.

"Mama, I'm leaving," she said, raising her voice slightly.

Her mother looked up, slightly surprised, and checked the Fossil watch dangling from her slender wrist. "It's five already?"

"Yeah," Sora said, shifting her weight.

Toshiko rubbed her eyes exhaustedly and sighed. "So you'll be leaving?"

"Yeah."

"Will you be home for dinner?"

"Yeah."

There was silence, and then Toshiko nodded. "I'll see you at home, Sora."

**X**

It was raining.

Sora could have pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head, but she liked the rain, watching the fat, glutinous drops fall and splatter on the grass, the benches, the sidewalk, spotting and spotting and spotting until the pavement was the same darkened color and the hems of her jeans dragged in the puddles.

She could have pulled her iPod out and stuck her earbuds in and turned the world off and Miyavi or L'Arc-en-Ciel on, but she liked hearing the rain pitter and patter. It was oddly comforting.

She liked the rolling clouds and the deep rumbling of thunder and the crackling of lightning and the grey darkness outside that came with the rainfall, but she didn't like the uncomfortable stickiness of humidity. (Miraculously, her hair remained straight and smooth as usual, while other people's hair had an alarming and unnatural tendency to frizz everywhere.)

But the cool dampness of raindrops on the back of her neck and her arms and eyelids and cheeks was wonderful. She liked to be outside when it was raining, regardless of the time. She'd snuck out of the apartment back in Odaiba once at three in the morning and wandered about, letting the rain shower on her, drench her and leave her shivering and cold, and until the downpour became so heavy that she had to seek refuge under the awning of a _manga_ shop. She'd fallen asleep and woken up at seven that same morning, and run back home to find her mother hysterical and ready to call the police. She'd been grounded for a month, and she'd sneezed for two, but she thought that it was worth it all.

Sora tipped her head back carefully, reveling in the feel of water on her face. Her bangs soon plastered to her forehead, and she swept them out of the way impatiently, closing her eyes and spreading her arms. The streets weren't as crowded as they normally were, only businesspeople rushing past with black umbrellas and the regular taxicabs. Sora was just another crazy teenager roaming the streets because she had nothing better to do.

"Hey, stranger."

Sora jumped and prepared her lungs for the loudest scream possible when a hand clamped down on her shoulder, but when she lifted her eyelids, chocolate brown eyes flecked with gold peered back at her curiously.

"Taichi!" Sora nearly fell over, and to compensate, she grabbed the boy's collar and punched him lightly in the chest.

He smiled broadly and rubbed the spot where her fist had made contact. "What're you doing out here, Takenouchi?"

"I could say the same to you, Yagami," Sora snorted, pushing her bangs back down on her forehead and scrutinizing him. "What _are_ you doing here?"

"Waiting for you," Taichi said, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly and blushing a bit.

Sora cocked a slender eyebrow and crossed her arms over her stomach. "Why?"

"I didn't see you all of last week. Geez, Sora, if you wanted to, you'd have everyone on a wild goose chase while you were standing in the room!"

It was Sora's turn to blush, and she ducked her head defensively. "Well, when you put it that way, Yagami…"

"Hey." He lifted her chin with a forefinger and grinned at her. "I just wanted to say hi."

Sora smiled. "And you still haven't."

Pink tinged the tan skin of his cheeks and he scuffed the tip of his shoe against the wet pavement as he jammed his hands into the deep pockets of his jeans.

Yagami Taichi was tall, broad-shouldered, and had a strong, muscular frame, from playing soccer for all of his living, breathing years, or for as long as Sora had known him. Taichi's mother and Sora's mother would get together and chat for hours on end while Taichi and Sora napped, threw building blocks at each other, and pulled at each other's hair.

His chestnut hair, a shade lighter than Hikari's because of all the time he spent outside kicking around his soccer ball, had always been a bushy, disheveled mess, and his eyes had always been gorgeous, melted chocolate brown flecked with gold that fairly glittered in the sunlight. His skin was bronze and tan, and he was long and lean.

Today, however, it was neither sunny nor appropriate weather for any outdoor sport. He was dressed in a dark orange hooded sweatshirt and baggy, ultra-faded jeans, his ratty soccer shoes, and held a soccer ball under his right arm.

"Hi," he said, finally, looking down at her.

"Hi," Sora replied, her smile widening at his obvious discomfort. "Is something wrong?"

He shook his head. "_Iie_," he replied quickly, hands still in pockets, soccer ball now being kicked between his feet in short, practice strokes.

Sora had given up soccer after summer camp in Odaiba, but she never ceased to marvel at Taichi's obvious skills. When in his soccer world he was graceful and controlled, always thinking before taking action, almost calculating. Girls tended to fall for the soccer player in him.

The stark contrast between him and Yamato, the two best friends, was striking. Whereas Taichi was a full-fledged jock, Yamato was a musician of enormous proportions. Taichi had a tendency to be rather insensitive, loud, and a bit brash, while Yamato was quiet, brooding, and always had a hint of irritation or boredom in his eyes. Both were lean and tall, but while Yamato was on the slimmer side, Taichi was bulkier from his years of soccer and other off-season sports. Taichi was tanner, Yamato was a bit paler, and they frequently had arguments about who was better looking that caught Sora and Mimi in the middle, but in the end, their personalities clicked perfectly, they both had gorgeous eyes, and when they got into fights, they ended up on the floor, struggling against each other's chokeholds.

She watched as he kicked the ball up to the crook where his leg and ankle met and began bouncing it up and down casually, standing on the spot.

She had been better at the sport than him, once upon a time, when they were still back in Odaiba and they were still closest and the very best of friends. She could beat him six ways from Sunday and he still wouldn't give up, and they would spend their after-school hours on the soccer field, kicking the ball around, getting into mud fights, and tackling each other violently.

She doubted that she was better than him now. He was the captain of the varsity team at school, which was the best in the district, possibly best in the county. She'd never gone back out on the field, and she'd packed her ball, uniform, and beloved shin guards away in a box in the back of her closet, covered with her tennis bag and three racquets.

"Hey," he said suddenly. The soccer ball smacked against the pavement and he tapped it gently with his foot to stop it.

"What?" Sora pulled the sleeves of her loose sweatshirt down over her fists.

"Let's go play."

Sora paused, staring at the white-and-black ball under his foot, contemplating.

"It's raining."

"That never stopped us back in Odaiba."

"I might get sick."

"What about the one time when you woke up in a phone booth?"

"Under the awning of that _manga_ store, _baka-chan_. And I didn't get sick."

"You were sneezing for two months."

"It's muddy."

Taichi threw his arms up. "If you don't want to go, just say so," he said, exasperated. He turned to walk away.

Sora caught his forearm and grinned at him. "Let's go."

Water was dripping from his crazy hair, onto his cheeks and his nose and trailing down his face to get lost in the fabric of his sweatshirt. He looked at her and his handsome face cracked into a grin.

"All right."

They took off running down the sidewalk to the closest park, dodging between and around irritable businesspeople and arguing about Sora's rusty soccer skills.

"I can beat your ass, Yagami."

"I'd like to see that happen, Takenouchi."

Her face split into an evil grin as she sprinted ahead of him and broke through the crowd. He was simply glad that he was the one to bring it to her face.

They were at the park.

"C'mon, Takenouchi, let's see what you still have. If you have anything."

Sora dropped the ball in front of her feet, watching the mud splatter up onto her jeans, and she felt a bit like her old self again.

"Ready, Yagami?"

He stood at the goal, knees bent, hands out in front, his eyes glinting oddly. "If you've got anything for me to be ready for, Takenouchi."

She pulled her leg back, cocked her foot, and let fly.

**X**

"Takenouchi Sora!"

Sora pushed the apartment door open wearily, carefully taking her shoes off and arranging them on the old newspaper so that the marble in the front hall wouldn't be stained.

"Sora!"

Sora winced and dropped her messenger bag next to her shoes, praying to the differential equation gods above (or below) that her notebook wasn't completely ruined.

"_Sora!_"

She bent slowly, cringing again as the pain in her thighs and calves set in, and rolled up the bottoms of her jeans to prevent excess dripping.

"Where were you?" Toshiko finally came into the small foyer and glared at her daughter. "Sora! It's January and you're playing soccer when it's freezing and raining? You didn't even call and leave a message! I didn't know where you were, I was sick with worry, I was –!"

"I'm fine, Mama," Sora said patiently, rolling her eyes. "I'm not cold, I was going to get wet walking home anyhow, and Taichi showed up out of nowhere and asked me if I wanted to play."

Her mother's eyes softened a bit at the mention of Taichi; she always liked the brown-haired soccer jock a bit more than Yamato.

"How's his mother?" she asked.

"Fine, but I didn't see her," Sora replied, taking the towel her mother handed her and wrapping it around her hair.

"You haven't eaten dinner?"

"Nope."

Toshiko exhaled, closed her eyes, and counted to ten. Sora waited patiently.

"It's nine-thirty!"

"I wasn't hungry! I didn't have money anyway! And Taichi's always broke!" Sora peeled her sweatshirt off and looked down at the light-blue short-sleeved T-shirt clinging to her stomach.

"I made ramen," Toshiko said, after ten seconds. "I'll go heat that up. Do you want chicken or shrimp?"

"Shrimp," Sora replied automatically. "I'll go change."

She walked down the hall to her room, skidding slightly in her wet socks. She walked into her room and took an immediate left through the door of the attached bathroom. Peeling off all her dirty clothes and throwing them into the hamper, taking a quick shower and speed-washing her hair, and changing into fresh underwear and flannel pajamas, Sora twisted her dripping, albeit clean, hair up into a bun and held it in place with a jaw clip.

She padded out to the kitchen and settled down on a stool at the breakfast bar and offered her mother a small smile.

"Sorry, Mama."

Toshiko set a bowl of steaming noodles in front of Sora and returned her smile. "It's all right, Sora-chan."

**X**

She was good at physics. She was good at biology. Hell, she was good at chemistry. And now she was busting her ass in pathogenic microbiology _and_ AP chemistry. She was the only junior in the former, and the smartest in the latter. She was the only junior doubling up on two weighted science courses, not to mention the fact that she was in a weighted math class where she was, again, the only junior.

AP English class, AP Macro- and Microeconomics, along with a tennis elective for physical education and a photography elective rounded off her schedule, and that added to being captain of the varsity tennis team, she was a shoo-in for Harvard or Columbia for wherever she wanted to go. She'd aced the SATs, wasn't even worried about the APs, and only need three more hours of community service to make the required one hundred hours to graduate. She planned on going over, of course.

Hence the fact that lately, everyone she ran into had been saying, "I haven't seen you in a while."

Sora wanted to throw down her books and scream in their faces. No words, just a long, drawn out "argh," or some other onomatopoeia.

"Miss Takenouchi?"

Sora gritted her teeth and looked up from her notebook when the teacher mangled her last name.

"What's the answer?" The teacher gestured to the board up front and Sora looked at the decay equation up on the board.

"Beta decay," Sora replied, almost bored, as she doodled in the margins of her notebook. Someone let out a low whistle of amazement from the back of the classroom, and to her right, Yamato snorted derisively and rolled his eyes.

The teacher looked from Sora to the equation uncertainly and nodded hesitantly. "That's right."

Sora rolled her eyes and went back to scribbling idly.

"Bitch," Yamato murmured casually.

"I try," Sora replied, drawing a sun and a couple of clouds on the blank page in front of her.

The whole notebook, save one page, was blank; it was January.

Takenouchi Sora wasn't used to taking notes, and she generally didn't need to, at least not in chemistry.

Almost all of Yamato's worn spiral, on the other hand, was filled with notes and drawings to help him better understand the inside and outside and intricacies of chemistry.

The bell rang, mercifully, and Sora slapped her notebook shut and fairly threw it into her messenger bag, slung the bag over her shoulder, and ran out of class.

"Sora!"

"Sora-chan!"

Sora turned around and briefly thought she was seeing double.

"Please don't stand next to each other," she said wearily, rubbing her eyes and realizing with detached surprise that she'd smeared her charcoal eyeliner. Mimi wouldn't let her live it down.

Takeru put a friendly arm around her shoulders and patted her on the head. "You look tired, Sora-chan."

"I'm going home and sleeping," Sora replied, trudging to her locker and taking Takeru with her. Yamato trailed behind vaguely.

"Good to hear," Takeru said, leaning against the wall and watching her struggle with the blue Masterlock as her slender fingers twisted the knob on the front this way and that in hopes of catching the right number.

She looked surprised, then smiled exhausted when Yamato carefully removed the lock from her hand and began twirling dial with expert fingers.

"I had to ask a favor." Takeru looked hesitant.

Sora snapped out of her funk and fixed Takeru with a piercing crimson stare. "Is it about Hikari?"

"What's about Hikari?" Taichi was passing by.

Sora imagined that she probably looked like a right slut at the moment, standing at her locker wearing a tank top with a very low-cut neckline (albeit under a sweatshirt) and surrounded by three gorgeous boys.

"Nothing," Takeru said nervously, looking up at Taichi and smiling in what he apparently thought was a winning manner.

Taichi snorted. "If you do anything to my sister, Takaishi…"

"Shut up and take your testosterone somewhere else," Sora said, putting her hand on Yamato's chest when the blond bristled defensively.

The three boys visibly relaxed, and Yamato popped Sora's locker open for her. The redhead smiled gratefully and piled her books into her locker, and after a moment of thinking, stuffed her empty bookbag in also. She pulled her coat on and grinned tiredly at the three boys.

"Taichi, Yamato, go away. I'm talking to Takeru alone."

"Hey!" The tension came back.

Sora squared her shoulders and glared at both boys. "Yama, you want to see your brother get laid, and Taichi, you know that 'Keru-chan is the best guy for your sister. Get lost."

She turned back to the younger blond. "_Baka-chan_, we need to get Mimi for this."

Both Taichi and Takeru were turning funny colors, and Yamato looked mildly amused and very attractive, leaning against the lockers with his arms crossed, but Sora didn't care. She finally understood the rush Mimi got from setting two people up, especially when it was obvious that they were meant to be together.

"Get your coat and forget about homework," Sora said, taking Takeru's wrist between her slender fingers, all the while scanning the crowds for her best friend. "I'm not letting you throw years of pining down the drain, and you're telling Yagami Hikari that you love her."

Taichi let out a strangled cry of protest, Takeru's face was somewhere between blue and purple, and Yamato was digging around in his pocket for something.

Mimi walked up, lavender binder held against her chest, hair perfect as ever. "What's up?"

Sora's eyes gleamed. "We're helping _baka-chan_."

"With Hikari?"

"Yes."

The glint in Mimi's eyes matched Sora's exactly. "Let's go."

So much for going home and sleeping. Takeru between them, the two girls scampered off, and Yamato watched with mild interest as Taichi's right eyebrow twitched uncontrollably.

**A/N: Excellent. Taichi made an appearance, Takeru and Hikari were brought into the story, and hopefully there'll be more about Mimi's love life, and more background on Jyou, Koushiro, Yamato, and Taichi. **

**Thank you to all the gorgeous people who've reviewed so far, and I have to say, I'm honored that _Lunita Cero_ was one of them. Both her Digimon fanfiction have to be the most well written, eloquent pieces of prose I've read in a while. **

**Obviously, there's more to come in this story. And as always, reviews make me smile. **


	3. Chapter 3

I own nothing.

**Symphony of Sound: Three**

There was smoke everywhere, empty beer cans and half-full glass bottles of Bacardi littered the floor, and the music was pulsing through the dim room. Teenagers from school, and surprisingly enough, the neighboring junior high, danced with wild abandon, silhouettes against the light, an orgy on the dance floor.

Sora sighed and slumped against the back of the couch, raspberry rum Bacardi bottle in one hand, the other rested on her forehead as she squinted into the dimness and tried to pick Mimi out of the crowd. Mimi had given her the alcohol to hold, and Sora had only taken a sip before realizing that she really didn't want to get plastered and have to take care of an equally inebriated Mimi.

Takeru and Hikari sat next to her, the blond boy's arm wrapped protectively around the brunette's slim shoulders, her head rested under his chin, her eyes closed, fast asleep. Taichi sat a little ways away, cigarette caught between two fingers, beer bottle held in the same hand, with a petite blonde girl in his lap giggling as he murmured meaningless nothings into her seashell ear and kept a hand at her tiny waist.

Yamato was on Sora's other side, a small, beaten-up and tattered notebook in his lap, a chewed-up pen behind his ear, and a cigarette dangling from his lips and a glass bottle of Absolut Vodka on the table next to him, already almost half gone. He claimed that he was at his creative peak when he was absolutely smashed-slash-plastered. Sora thought that coffee was the way to go when it came to get the creative juices flowing.

She, of course, had no qualms about drinking, especially when it came to warm sake or the Absolut Vodka that Yamato was currently nursing, or Stolichnaya, or green apple Bacardi, or even the occasional sour apple Schnapps. But not a party, where there was a high chance of getting busted by police and getting caught in a compromising situation. College would not approve, and neither would her mother.

"Hey," Koushiro said, sitting down heavily next to Sora and eyeing the Bacardi clutched between her fingers.

Sora smiled wryly and waved the bottle around a bit. "I'm not drinking. Mimi is."

Koushiro's reddish-brown eyebrows disappeared under the hair spilling over his forehead, and he looked over to where Mimi was dancing rather provocatively with a hulking quarterback. "Shouldn't you…?"

Sora laughed and shook her head, her ponytail loosening a bit. "Nah, she's fine. I'll pull her out of there before things get too hot and heavy."

"How's it feel to be a babysitter?" Koushiro asked.

Sora frowned. Izumi Koushiro was without a doubt a baby genius, and he was known for having a way with computers, but sensitivity was not one of his strong points. She knew him to be unconsciously sweet and caring and helpful, but at the same time horribly blunt and slightly oblivious.

He was one of this childhood friends who hadn't changed drastically. He still had a way with computers of course, and he was the head of the tech club at school, second in command of the computer networking system at school, and was taking classes that were even more advanced than hers. His hair was still a spiky, reddish-brown mess, his voice was still matter-of-fact and to-the-point, but he had grown taller, a little darker, and had quite a way with the ladies, who surprisingly loved tech geeks. Sora would always see him as the kid who said "Prodigious!" instead of "Cool!", and she would never hold it against him, but seeing him swarmed in the hallways, with pretty girls hanging off of him left and right, was something that still made her laugh.

The same was with Jyou, when she thought about it. He was a senior, been accepted early into five different top-notch universities, and was currently banging his head against the wall trying to figure out the pros and cons of each school. The black-that-looked-blue-haired boy had grown even taller, skinnier, more intelligent, and a bit more reclusive. His hair was longer but he still had his glasses, and Sora had pathogenic microbiology with him. He was good to talk to, though not so much at expressing himself, but Sora loved for his clumsy sweetness and his habit of turning thirty-second explanations into ten-minute speeches.

"Thanks for being so blunt, Kou-chan," she said, rolling her eyes. "But it's not fun," she admitted finally. Koushiro laughed and patted her on the shoulder consolingly.

"Go dance," he said. "I'll keep a watch on Mimi's alcohol."

Sora quirked an eyebrow in way of inquiry.

"And by that I mean dump it into the closest potted plant," Koushiro added, almost-black eyes gleaming. He took the bottle by its neck, plucked it from Sora's hands, and cocked his head in Yamato's direction. "Go ask him to dance."

Sora's eyes widened. "Why?"

"He's halfway drunk and still doesn't have new lyrics," the computer genius said, leaning back against the sofa cushions and looking around the room, probably for a potted plant. He cared more for Mimi than he would ever admit, and it made Sora smile.

"The least you could do is relieve him," the boy added, eyeing the clear contents of the bottle he now held.

The music pulsed and the lights flashed and Sora considered Yamato's slouched profile, cigarette tip glowing between two long, guitarist fingers, vodka bottle at his feet, the bite marks in the pen perched behind his ear, and a pensive expression on his face.

As she moved closer, she could see that the notebook was open to the fifth page, and Sora could make out an indistinct scrawl between the light blue lines, Yamato's handwriting in black ink distinct against the white of the recycled paper. There were two lines slapped down on the page, which had been boldly crossed out. There were notes in the margins, doodles in the top right corner, and a chunk ripped out of the bottom.

Sora reveled in details. She thought that life was nothing without them, because people didn't have personality and objects didn't have color and ideas didn't come alive. Blood wasn't simply red: it was crimson and carmine and titian and strawberry and ruby all mixed together and dashed with a hint of brown, a touch of black, and a shade of blue. It was the same way that the sky was actually cerulean and azure, and the same way that Taichi's eyes were chocolate and sienna. Mimi's hair was caramel and honey, and leaves in autumn were gold and pumpkin and flaming red.

Description, description, description.

"Hi," she said quietly, sitting down next to him and peering at his notebook.

He took a drag from his cigarette and Sora watched the glow of the tip, Yamato's lips when he exhaled, and the cloud of smoke that drifted lazily into the air as he breathed out. "Want some?" he held up the fag.

"You can keep your cancer stick to yourself, thank you," Sora said, glaring at him and pushing his hand away.

He laughed. "Still too good for drugs, Sora-chan?"

Yamato had been smoking since the not-so-tender age of fourteen, which meant he'd been at it for two years. He'd picked it up when he'd picked up a guitar, along with coffee and alcohol, and Sora was sure that he was simply emulating Hyde from L'Arc-en-Ciel and that the fad would pass, but–though Yamato wasn't addicted and could go for weeks without smoking–whenever he was in the process of writing songs or music, he would go through two packs of cigarettes per day, along with at least six or seven cups of coffee, or hard liquor, if he could get it.

Sora ignored him. "What're you writing?"

"You mean what am I _not_ writing?" Yamato asked wryly, contemplating his cigarette then throwing it on the carpet, grinding the butt underneath his heel. "I've got nothing. No creativity; I might as well join some pop star's record label and start lip synching."

Sora snorted and shook her head disbelievingly. "No pop label would take you. You look too much like a tortured soul."

"Emo label." He revised quickly, making a face and combing his gorgeous hair down over one eye, fixing her with a soulful gaze with his other eye.

Sora rolled her eyes. "You're off my iPod if you do."

He laughed out loud and pushed his hair back to normal, lyrics dilemma momentarily forgotten. Sora reached over for the vodka at his feet and tossed back a sip, and winced when the liquid burned in her mouth and down her throat. Yamato watched her, amusement in his dark blue eyes, and Sora grinned at him.

"Let's dance."

**X**

His clothes were musty with smoke and his gorgeous eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, baggy from lack of sleep, and he looked thinner. His cheeks were sunken, his cheekbones more prominent, and his hair hung limply, not as bright and blond as it normally was. There was a pencil perched behind his ear, his T-shirt was wrinkled and stretched oddly, and his jeans were stained.

This was Yamato when writing.

He slumped against the wall and Sora watched him, concern in her carmine eyes, as he rubbed his face disconsolately and hung his arms over his knees, contemplating the floor. There was a distinct cloud smelling of liquor, cigarette smoke, coffee, and sharpened pencils surrounding him, and she couldn't help but wince as he came closer. She wondered how he managed to get to school this morning, for he looked lost and dazed and not all there.

"I need a new name for the band," was the first thing that came from his lips, and Sora winced, because she knew that she was the reason that he doubted himself.

"Teenage Wolves is fine," she assured him, sitting down next to him and folding her legs against her stomach and resting her chin on her knees. This was completely contrary to what she said to him otherwise, and she felt bad for lying to him, but she knew that he wouldn't remember any of the conversation the next day.

"I need something new, something different," he agonized, gripping his hair between his fingers, and it stuck up in odd spikes, and Sora resisted the urge to laugh.

"Something original?"

"Stop mocking me," and he said it with such seriousness that she stopped, sighing and smoothing his hair back.

"You'll think of something, Yama-chan," she said softly, patting him on the shoulder, and suddenly she was all business, and she prodded him deftly. "Homework? Proper clothing? Why the hell are you wearing a T-shirt? It's fucking snowing!"

"Didn't do it," he said wearily. "Jesus, Sora, I've been chain-smoking for the past forty-eight hours, drunk 8 cups of coffee average in 12 hours, and I've finished off the whiskey under the sink, and you're asking me about homework and appropriate clothing?"

"You finished the whiskey?" she asked, shocked, forgetting about his clothes. Instead, she worried about his liver.

He nodded mutely and hung his head between his knees. She stroked his hair soothingly, combing her fingers through it and pushing it off his forehead, before patting his knee and standing up, taking his considerably larger hand in both of hers.

"Let's get your books," she said, helping his stand.

"I think I've forgotten where my locker is," he mumbled, head drooping, eyes shutting slowly.

Sora laughed and began walking. "Taichi'll help you to class, I promise."

His response was silence, and Sora took it as an affirmative.

"Thanks, Sora-chan," he said, suddenly, leaning his head down and whispering into her ear, and she smiled to herself, leading his along slowly.

**X**

"Bible Kiss Bible," Sora whispered, doodling the words in her English notebook, and looking at Taichi expectantly. "What do you think?"

"About what?" Taichi asked, pulling a highlighter out and underscoring a passage in _Hamlet_.

"Bible Kiss Bible."

"Never heard of them," Taichi replied absentmindedly. He was underlining passages frantically with different colored highlighters, trying to keep up with the teacher's rapid lecturing. "Hey, what does this mean?"

Sora leaned over and read the passage that he was pointing to. "Taichi, it's reinforcing the point that Hamlet's crazy," she said, with a touch of asperity.

Taichi was silent for a moment, the nodded and underlined the sentence heavily with a pen.

"So Bible Kiss Bible sounds like a band name?" Sora continued.

Taichi switched back to his notebook and paused only to throw Sora a reproachful glare. "Of course it does. Think logically, Sora-chan…who would call a book that?"

"Well, why do you assume that I'm talking about either a book or a band?"

"Because you sure as hell weren't talking about a tennis player," Taichi replied, rolling his eyes. He jotted down a few more notes, and sighed with relief when the teacher stopped talking.

"I want you all to find the pertinent passages in the book that will support you thesis for your final paper. I'm giving you fifteen minutes of class time to work on this, and I expect the first paragraph of your essay, with your thesis underlined, and all your supporting quotes typed out, by tomorrow."

Sora rolled her eyes and bent down, reaching blindly into her messenger bag and searching for her text. She came up with the dog-eared copy and flipped through the pages, reading her notes in the margins thoughtfully and unsticking post-its marked with arrows that had originally pointed to quotes, crumpling them and placing them on the desk. She looked over at Taichi, who bent over his book, head propped up by his hands, his forehead furrowed and lined.

She liked him when he was concentrating. His broad shoulders were hunched and his head bent over a tiny paperback and his eyebrows knit in extreme absorption, and Sora could almost forget that he was the boy that used to go outside and play soccer in the mud in lieu of doing his homework. She of course had been his partner in crime, and when she thought about it, her life had changed loads (for better or for worse, she didn't know).

Back in Odaiba, she had been smart, probably one of the top ten in her class, but she didn't apply herself, and she knew it didn't matter, because her teachers loved her, and when it all came down, she could do sample problems on the chalkboard faster than the kids who had actually done their homework. Her literature teacher had loved her reading voice and often asked her to stand and recite poetry to the class, and her science teacher had her do demonstrations in front of the class. She didn't have to work for anything, and she knew that she was guaranteed entrance to Tokyo University. Her future was set: she knew that she would be a biochemist or work at Squarenix; she had nothing to worry about.

She would finish school, go to tennis practice, and after some tutoring work, she would go home and help her mother cook dinner. Life back in Japan had been relatively low-stress for her, considering the environment, but that all changed in New York City.

The city was huge, bustling, full of taxis and buses and trains and subways, which was nothing that Sora couldn't handle, but she knew that she had more to prove living there. She wasn't guaranteed entrance into Harvard or Yale; she had to work for it. To some teachers, she was just an immigrant who spoke English with an inflection and to the students, she was a Japanese girl who didn't even look Japanese, with her auburn hair and her odd crimson eyes; her peers had been expecting someone like Sato Ayumi: graceful and charming, feathered black hair and brown eyes, and Sora knew she was nothing like her. Mimi had fit right in; she played off her differences and made herself unique, telling her new American friends that she was half-Asian and hence her unique coloring, but Sora couldn't bring herself to lie. It wasn't that she was inherently honest, because that was far from the truth, but she couldn't handle lying about her culture and heritage. She didn't want to tell the blonde cheerleader in her first period class that she dyed her hair, or that she was half-Irish and half-Japanese.

Mimi had stopped talking to those new friends soon enough, realizing that she liked being one hundred percent Japanese too much, and the seven kids stuck together. Hikari had been better at adjusting; she was sweet and people latched on to her, knowing that with her disposition and charisma, she was the ideal best friend. Takeru had been shy at first, but he had gotten on well with a group of Japanese kids in his grade, and he and Hikari were still young and not as jaded as Sora or Yamato or Mimi or Taichi and they established a solid circle of friends.

Sora, Yamato, Mimi, and Taichi, on the other hand, tended to stay together. Sora was Mimi's soul sister, and vice versa, and Yamato and Taichi got along better than they would ever admit. The four of them had been through too much to ever forget anything, and they stuck together through thick and thin, and Yamato and Taichi had tried to yell some sense into Mimi when she had gone through her half-Asian phase, and everyone joined together to support Yamato when was in a funk. Taichi was fairly happy-go-lucky, and whenever he had a problem, he kicked a soccer ball around until it was gone. Sora kept to herself, even in her group of friends, only sharing with Mimi and maybe the two boys when it was absolutely necessary. She cried to herself some nights, but she never burdened others with her problems. She'd learned a long while back that nothing was forever, and even though she suspected that this would never happen to her and Mimi, there was always the possibility that they would have a falling out.

"Soraaaaa," Taichi said, tugging on her sleeve.

She glared at him and shook him off. "What?"

"The bell rang two minutes ago," he said calmly. She realized that he was standing, _Hamlet_ and highlighters in hand, pencil stuck behind his ear.

"Then why're you still here?" she asked, blowing her bangs out of her eyes and tossing her copy of the play into her bag and pulling the strap over her head.

"Waiting for you, Sora-chan," he said. His eyes sparkled, like they used to when they were eleven and kicked the soccer ball around for hours and stuck ice down each others T-shirts and licked at ice creams while sitting on park benches and giggled when it dripped off their chins and arms. "Friends do that for each other."

Sora smiled and followed him out of the empty room.

**X**

"Bible Kiss Bible?" Taichi said suddenly, dribbling the soccer ball up and down the field as Sora sat on the sidelines in the muddy grass, watching him with her chin propped up on her fists.

"Yeah," Sora said.

"Where'd you come up with that?"

"Don't remember," Sora replied, shrugging and standing up carefully, trying not to get mud on the sleeves of her dark blue long-sleeved T-shirt. She pulled her hood over her head and her hands disappeared into her sleeves, and she crossed her arms over her stomach. "But what do you think?"

"I like it, but you should ask Yamato," Taichi said, kicking the ball to her. She stopped it with her left foot, and the boy jogged over, slightly winded.

"Hi," Mimi said, walking up and wrinkling her nose at mud puddles scattered around in the grass. "What're we talking about?"

"How'd you find me?" Sora asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Sora-chan, you couldn't hide from me if you wanted to," Mimi replied casually, waving her off and waving the subject away. Sora made a face at her, and Mimi laughed, putting an arm around her shoulder.

"Bible Kiss Bible," Taichi said suddenly, and Mimi raised an eyebrow, replying, "Haven't heard of them."

"See?" Taichi said, looking utterly pleased.

"Fine," Sora said. "I'm telling you, three hours after the fact, the name doesn't seem that cool."

Taichi laughed, and Mimi hit him on the shoulder. "What're you two talking about?"

Sora rolled her eyes and picked up her messenger bag, adjusting the strap on her shoulder and opening it up, digging around and coming up with a scrap of paper. "I'll go tell him, I guess," she said, squinting at the paper and turning it upside-down and then again on it's side.

"Do you want to go to a movie tonight?" Mimi asked, her voice hopeful.

"We have to do homework before," Sora said. She pulled her cell phone and flipped it open, checking the screen. "Mimi, it's already five! Can't we go tomorrow?"

"Soraaaaa," Mimi wheedled. "You won't go shopping with me, you won't go makeup-hunting with me, you won't get smoothies with me, and now you won't even go to the movies with me?"

"Mimi, shut up," Sora said, a grin on her face. "I do all of the above with you, and more."

Mimi fixed Sora with a stare and fluttered her eyelashes, curled, lengthened, and given more volume with black mascara.

Sora sighed. "Call me at seven, okay?"

Mimi clapped her hands and hugged Sora quickly. "I will, I will!" Sora rolled her eyes and began walking away.

She heard Taichi laugh and was pretty sure that he put an arm around Mimi's shoulder, saying, "And until then…"

And she heard Mimi respond with a, "Ew, you're muddy, you cretin, get off of me." Sora laughed, waved at them without turning back, and walked off the muddy soccer field, heading towards Yamato's band practice area.

A/N: Well, I got rid of that writer's block fairly quickly. More Taichi-Sora interaction in this chapter, some drugs and vodka action, and I think this chapter is longer than any of my other ones. :D

**The idea for 'Bible Kiss Bible' is from an episode of _Gilmore Girls_. It's from one of the earlier episodes in the third season, but I'm not sure which one, and I would never print falsehoods, especially where _Gilmore Girls_ is concerned. **

**No, I'm serious.**

**Thank you thank you thank you to AAAAALL my lovely reviewers (especially Kryssie, for the nice long review). Huggles abound! Tell me how it is, eh? What you thought about Yamato's cigarette habit, if they all seem really OOC, etc., etc. Criticism (constructive or otherwise) is always welcomed.**

**Reviews make me smile, of course.**

**And obviously, there's more to come. **


	4. Chapter 4

I own nothing.

**Symphony of Sound: Four**

The phone rang, and Sora negligently picked it up, cradling it between her ear and shoulder and offering a lazy hello.

"I need help."

"With what?" Sora managed to shove around a yawn, taking a drag of her coffee and walking a few sips to refill the mug. She leaned against the kitchen counter and looked on, concerned, as her mother shuffled into the kitchen bleary-eyed and looking like she hadn't slept at all.

"I want to ask Hikari out."

Sora yawned again, and almost immediately her mother yawned. "Why do you need my help?" Sora opened the refrigerator and took out the carton of eggs, prodding it in her mother's general direction and raising an eyebrow. Toshiko nodded gratefully and poured herself a cup of coffee and taking a huge sip.

Sora put a frying pan over the stove and turned a range on, letting it heat up before dropping a small pat of butter in and watching it slide around and melt slowly before her eyes.

"I'm scared," Takeru replied, and Sora almost laughed as she cracked two eggs into the pan, grabbing a spatula as she dropped two slices of bread into the toaster.

"You can't be scared. She's only a girl, 'Keru-chan."

"She's a pretty girl," Takeru replied vehemently, almost sounding offended. "I get nervous, Sora-chan. My palms get sweaty, and what if I drop the phone right in the middle of asking her and she thinks I'm an idiot and hangs up on me and then Daisuke calls and he asks her out and she says yes?"

"Not going to happen," Sora replied, prodding the egg yolks and flipping the eggs over expertly. The toast popped up, and Sora put it on a plate, slathering both slices with butter. She put the eggs down next to the toast, turned the flame off, and slid the plate in front of Toshiko, who dug in fervently.

"How do you know?"

"She likes you, numbskull, not Daisuke. He's a loudmouth with big hair, like her brother. She doesn't want to date a Taichi prototype, she wants you."

"Why? Because I look like my brother? Oh, Christ, what if she likes my brother and I'm just a substitute until she can get the real thing?"

"Yeah, that's true, most girls like rock stars. They have that bad boy appeal, don't they? Maybe you're too clean cut, 'Keru-chan."

"What!"

"Takeru, shut up, please. She likes you because you're cute and get all fluttery-stomached and nervous when you're even considering asking her out. Girls like that." Sora finished her coffee (her fifth cup of the morning) and rinsed the mug out, putting it in the dish drainer and waving to her mother, who nodded, mouthed thank you, and unfurled the newspaper.

"Can you come over?" Takeru asked, his voice slightly tinny through the phone. Sora walked into the living room, flopping back into her leather recliner and turning the TV on, flipping through the channels and deciding on the History Channel.

"Why don't you ask Yamato?"

"He won't help me," Takeru said, and he sounded so hopeless and like the eight-year-old back in the Digiworld that Sora couldn't help but say yes.

"I'll be over in fifteen minutes," she sighed, turning the TV off and standing up, walking down the hall to her room and opening her closet, throwing a set of clothes on the bed and rooting around through the junk on her floor for a pair of shoes. "Thanks for ruining my Saturday, Takeru."

"You'd be watching the History Channel otherwise," the blond said smugly. "You should be thanking me for improving your Saturday."

"Bastard," Sora replied. "I'll be over soon. Don't melt if I'm not there on time."

"Very funny," he replied. "I'm at my dad's, so come over there."

"Yeah, bye." Sora hung up and threw the phone on the bed, quickly changed into black long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of ultra-faded flared jeans, pulling socks on and lacing her black low-top Converse up. She brushed her hair, tied it into her usual haphazard ponytail, blowing her bangs out of her eyes in annoyance, and surveyed her reflection in the mirror, deemed herself suitable for society, and rushed out the door, grabbing her black pea coat and grey scarf at the door.

"I'm going out, Mama; I don't think I'll be back for lunch," she called, and Toshiko shuffled into the hall, looking much better than she had five minutes ago.

"You'll be home for dinner?"

"Yes, Mama." Sora offered her mother a smile as she fished around in her pockets for her iPod; she grabbed it and held it up triumphantly, sticking the earbud headphones in her ears and turning the player on. "I promise I'll be home for dinner."

"I'll see you tonight, Sora," Toshiko replied, smiling as Sora walked out the door, already in her own world.

**X**

Sora's cell phone buzzed insistently against her thigh as she was walking down the street, and she pulled it out and flipped it open, looking at the display and then rolling her eyes and putting her phone to her ear.

"I've been trying to call you for the past half hour."

"My phone's only been on for ten minutes," Sora replied, laughing as Hikari sighed and told her quietly that she was exaggerating to have a greater effect, to demonstrate the direness of her situation.

"What's wrong?"

"I need help."

Sora sighed but took the bait. "With what?"

"Telling Takeru I like him."

"You two…" Sora muttered, switching the phone to her other ear, but Hikari didn't hear her and started in on a full-fledged rant that was completely unlike her and frankly, Sora was taken aback.

"But I'm scared. What if he doesn't like me? What if he likes someone else, like Miyako or Jun, or _what if_ he's gay? Oh, god, I'd look like such an idiot then, because we're supposed to be best friends, aren't we, and if I haven't noticed by now that he's gay then what sort of friend am I?"

"You're not –" Sora began, only to be cut off. She sighed and stepped into a Starbucks, pushing her way to the front of the line, ordering an espresso, and shoving her money, with exact change, into the cashier's hand, mouthing to her to rush the order.

"Though it doesn't make sense for him to be gay, does it? He's had girlfriends before, hasn't he? Or is that Daisuke? Oh, no, what if he's in love with Daisuke and not me?"

Sora took her espresso, took a sip, and nearly choked at the idea. "Hikari…"

"Maybe it's not even Daisuke. What if it's you? I mean, how come he's always talking to you for help with asking me out, because that doesn't make any sense, right? Why isn't he asking Mimi, she's like a professional dater so she would know what she talking about and she would be able to help him more than you would – no offense, Sora," Hikari added hastily.

Sora wiped her mouth and rolled her eyes. "None taken, Hikari, of course."

"But it doesn't make any sense. He likes hanging out with you, and he talks to you even when there isn't really anything to talk about, so what if he likes you and not me. You're too old for him, I guess, but still, guys like older women – within reason – because they have more experience, but then again, if he wanted someone with experience, he would go to Mimi – oh god, what if he likes Mimi? Why didn't I see it before? Actually, he probably doesn't even think about me outside of talking to me at school. What if he thinks I'm annoying? What if he really wants me to leave him alone and I'm not getting the message and I'm annoying him even more by hanging around him when he doesn't want me to?"

At this point, Sora held the phone away from her ear and kept walking down the sidewalk, coming to an intersection and taking a left, dodging through traffic and crossing safely, without spilling a drop of her coffee.

"Or maybe he does like me and he's too shy to admit it. What if he thinks I'm too aggressive or outgoing and he's scared of me? Do you think I'm too forward, Sora? What if he thinks I'm some sort of dominating sex goddess who's going to handcuff him in bed and play those perverted sex games with him?"

Sora spit her coffee out at this point. "Hikari, what…? How do you even know about those?"

"Oh please, Sora," Hikari replied, "I'm sweet, not stupid."

Sora laughed and threw her empty cup into a trashcan. "Are you done?"

"Not quite, actually. What if –"

"No, you're done," Sora interrupted, looking up at the highrises and squinting, trying to figure out which one was Yamato's. "Listen, I'm on my way to Takeru's right now. He asked Yamato for help, but Yamato's an idiot and he's not helping, so your sweetheart called me for help because he's scared of you –"

"Because he thinks I'm a dominating sex goddess."

"No, because you're a pretty girl and his hands get sweaty whenever he thinks about you and he's worried that if he calls you to tell you that he likes you or to ask you out that he'll drop the phone, and in the split second that he drops the phone, Daisuke will call, you'll go on call waiting, and you'll say yes to Daisuke when he asks you out."

"That's ridiculous," Hikari laughed, and then paused. "Oh…" She said. "Wow, I must have sounded stupid, Sora-chan."

"I had a digital recorder held to the phone the whole time that you were talking, too," Sora quipped, laughing when Hikari made a strangled choking noise. "I'm kidding. Bottom line is, he likes you as much as you like him, though not in so many words – he got that from Yamato, I think – but don't worry because he's not gay and he doesn't like me."

Sora stopped in front of an apartment high rise, squinted, and smiled at the doorman as he held the door open for her.

"I'm at his place right now, so I'm going to hang up on you, and I promise you'll hear from Takeru soon."

"Promise? I'm going to explode, Sora-chan, I swear."

"If that wasn't an explosion right there, Hikari-chan, I don't know what is. I promise." Sora stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. "I'll talk to you later."

"Okay, bye."

Sora snapped her phone shut, rolled her eyes, and waited for the elevator to ding and the doors the swish open. Takeru was down the hall, standing outside of the apartment, shifting from one foot to the other and looking rather like a little kid who had eaten too much sugar. Not guilty, but unable to sit still.

"Get your coat," Sora said as she drew closer.

"Why?"

"We'll talk while we're walking," Sora replied. She stepped into the apartment, got Takeru's coat from the closet, yelled to Yamato that they were leaving, and walked out, closing the door behind her.

"You have a key, yeah?" She asked.

"Little too late for that," Takeru retorted, pulling a small silver key out of his pocket and showing it to her. She reached over and ruffled his hair up and began walking down the hall, and he scrambled after her, following eagerly.

**X**

"Assemble my own gift basket?" Takeru asked dubiously, as they walked through the aisles at Walgreen's.

Sora tossed two boxes of truffles and packages of tissue paper into the plastic basket hooked through her arm and turned back to smile at Takeru. "Trust me. Girls _love_ this stuff. I wouldn't, but Hikari would." She stepped into another aisle and dropped a disposable camera in with all the other stuff. Another aisle, and she began rifling though the various gift cards, looking at six or seven before choosing one with its envelope and dropping it in.

"Shouldn't I choose something?" Takeru asked hesitantly.

"What does she like? Favorite colors? Wait, duh, I know that," Sora said, facing him and looking at him straight in the eye, promptly distracted by a box of hair dye for a black not found in the natural world.

"Leg warmers, she used to wear them all the time back in Odaiba," Takeru said. "She loves her digital camera, but she wants a film one, and she likes lilies."

Sora's face split into a grin. "Then we'll have to pay a visit to the flower shop." She picked up two spools of ribbons in bright green and pale pink.

"Don't we need a basket to have a gift basket?"

Sora considered it. "Yeah."

**X**

"_Arigatou gozaimasu_, Takenouchi-san!"

They got an Easter lily from the Takenouchi flower shop, where Sora's mother insisted that the flower was on her, that Takeru needed it to woo Hikari and she couldn't put a price on love. When they left the shop, the bell chiming as the door opened and closed, Sora could have sworn that there was a tear in the corner of her mother's left eye, and as soon as she and Takeru were on the sidewalk, she thought she saw that tear slide a slow crystal path down Toshiko's fair cheek.

Sora didn't know much about her parents prior to the divorce; she didn't know how they'd met, how her father had proposed, how long they'd been married before they had her. She knew about things after the divorce: that her mother had drowned herself in alcohol and subsequently drowned her grief; that she threw a candle and a glass vase full of red roses at his back when he walked out of the apartment with his suitcases in that stupid tweed suit of his, and Sora had thrown her soccer ball at his back, because Mama was crying and Sora had never seen Mama cry and he was a bad guy for making her cry. He had told her that he loved her (he hadn't said that to Mama) and when he tried to hug her and give her a kiss on the cheek and wormed out of his arms and ran into her room, slamming and locking the door and hiding under her bed in case he got mad at her for being disrespectful.

He'd left that day, and Toshiko bounced back after a week, throwing herself into her work head on; the flower shop prospered, and Sora never got a card or an email from her father. She got a annual gift given at random times during the year, in hopes that perhaps one year he would mail it at the right time and he would get a thank you note for remembering her birthday. He had yet to be right, and Sora wouldn't contact him even if he was right. It was a matter of loyalty, and she was loyal to her mother.

She suddenly wanted to know if her father, young and in love, had given her mama Easter lilies and took her for walks in the park and held her hand sometimes and even kissed her on the cheek once. She would never know, because Toshiko wouldn't talk about it, but maybe she would ask one day.

**X**

"What do I say?" Takeru asked, as they stepped into the elevator and the door swished quietly shut in front of them. Sora pressed the button for the seventh floor and looked at Takeru, who was shifting on the spot nervously.

"I don't know," Sora shrugged. "Just hide the basket if Taichi answers the door, because you know that he'll kick your ass if he sees you with something for Hikari. If her mom answers the door, ask if you can see Hikari inside, and if her dad opens the door, ask if Hikari can come out, and don't show him the basket. Both of them think all you want to do is get into Hikari's pants." Takeru opened his mouth, and Sora glared at him. "Don't tell me if you want to or not."

"But what do I _say_?"

"You're the one madly in love with her, not me."

The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Takeru stepped out, waiting for Sora to follow and sighing as they walked down the brightly lit corridor and muttering to himself madly. Sora calmly retied her ponytail, adjusted her scarf, and undid and redid the buttons of her jacket as they stood in front of the door, G22 with their surname underneath, and Takeru raised his fist to knock.

The gift basket was pretty, or at least Sora thought so, for having no artistic abilities (though being able to arrange flowers) and only fifteen minutes to throw something together. The ribbons wound around the handle, the camera and candies and card were nestled in a bed of crinkly tissue paper, along with a couple rolls of color and black-and-white film and a piece of notebook paper, still crinkly-edged, with an IOU promising something more to come later.

The door creaked open, a single chocolate brown eye peeking around to see who was there, and then Hikari came into full view, smiling shyly and tucking her silky hair behind her ear because it had come undone from the large light brown Chococat clip that was holding it back.

"Hi, 'Keru-chan," she said hesitantly.

"Yagami-san," Takeru replied, bowing quickly.

"No one's home," Hikari said shyly, opening the door wider. "Taichi won't be back until tonight, and my parents went out grocery shopping and to lunch. Do you want to come in?"

Takeru picked up the gift basket and held it out to her wordlessly, nodding furiously and blinking at an abnormal rate.

He was so tall compared to her. Hikari was incredibly petite as it was, small-boned and delicate looking, with her haircut that barely grazed her collarbones and her slight wrists and thighs that seemed to be as big around as Sora's upper arms. Takeru, on the other hand was tall and lanky and lean, much like Yamato though still shorter than his brother. Hikari tucked away perfectly against his side, and he always held her gently, like she was something precious, like Wedgwood, and would break if he didn't treat her with care. Hikari always looked up at him with eyes shining and smile heartbreaking, and they looked perfect together, even at this young age.

Sora put her hands in her pockets and looked at Hikari, nodding her head in the direction of the elevator, and Hikari nodded. Takeru's back was turned as he took off his shoes and coat, and Hikari mouthed a thank you to Sora, who shrugged and walked off.

"Do you want to go to the living room?" Sora heard Hikari ask sweetly, and she heard Takeru's low murmur of a reply as the apartment door slowly shut, the lock clicked, and she was alone in the hall.

**X**

"I can't believe she didn't call me," Mimi said, sounding put off as she dipped a French fry into her milkshake and put it in her mouth, chewing delicately and contemplating. "Hikari was right in that sense, yeah? I mean, I pretty much am a professional dater, whereas you're sixteen and never-been-kissed."

"Thanks for that," Sora replied dully, taking a lick of her ice cream and dodging Taichi's half-hearted attempts to steal one of her chicken nuggets.

"I don't know how you could do this to your best friend," Taichi countered, taking a fry and making a great show of chewing it for Sora.

"You act as if I introduced your sister to a pedophile," Sora replied dryly. "It's Takeru. You even know where he lives; his phone number."

"You think he's all sweet, but you don't know what he could do to Hikari when they're alone. She's busy now, though; she's out with Miyako, so they can't be together alone."

"That's my brother you're talking about," Yamato replied. "Your sister can't be that innocent either."

Mimi and Sora exchanged looks, got up from the table, and made a hasty retreat.

"What are you implying? My sister's a whore?"

"That's taking reading between the lines a little to far."

"No, I really think…"

**X**

"Sora?"

"Yeah, Mimi-chan?"

They were wandering down the sidewalk, two airplane bottles of Bacardi between them and only pleasantly buzzed, as they waited for the clock to strike midnight so Sora could go home without her mother knowing and go to sleep without an interrogation.

"They're nice together, aren't they?"

"Mmhmm…they're cute."

"And Sora-chan?"

"What, Mimi-chan?"

"You won't be sixteen and never-been-kissed forever."

Sora didn't know what to make of that.

**A/N: I don't know about this chapter. It seemed okay, but this wasn't supposed to be the fourth chapter and was written after something else, so…everything's a bit jumbled right now. I guess I got Hikari and Takeru together to bargain for time. I think they were kind of OOC-esque, too, but that's just the way the chapter came out, and to change it now would be like a war crime. The characters write themselves, after all.  
**

**I hope you all like it, though. They get together cute, I guess, but tell me what you think, yeah? Anything else I could've added, was it too sudden; did the last section of the chapter make no sense? Because it really didn't to me either, it just seemed a bit appropriate. Maybe I know where the fanfic is going but I don't really know. Not on a conscious level. **

**It's 1:00AM &nd I really shouldn't be up. I doubt you want to hear me ramble.**

**Buuuut…I hoped you liked this latest installment, tell me what you think, and REVIEW! I luuurve them. &nd you guys when you do. Thankyew.**


	5. Chapter 5

I own nothing.

**Symphony of Sound: Five**

"Ne, Sora-chan…"

"Yes, Taichi?"

"You're really pretty."

"Thanks, Taichi."

There was a pause, in which Taichi toyed with the Bacardi bottle in his hand and Sora turned the page of the book in her hands, skimming the lines of _Dead Souls_ and making notes in the margins.

"Ne, Sora-chan…"

"Hai?"

"I really like you."

Sora closed the book over her pencil to mark her place and looked up at Taichi, pulling her legs up to her chest and propping her knees up on her chin. "I really like you too, Taichi."

"Good," he said, looking visibly relieved, and wiping sweat off his forehead in a clumsy, exaggerated motion, stumbling slightly on the spot and righting himself at the last moment, smiling a bit stupidly. "I think I love you, in fact," he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper as he swayed a bit from side to side and leaned in conspiratorially.

"I love you too, Taichi," Sora replied, a small, amused smile spreading across her face.

"Good," he repeated. He took a swig of Bacardi and closed his eyes, trembling visibly before offering her the bottle. Sora reached forward and took it, putting it down on the bench beside her.

"Sora-chan?"

"Hai?"

"Will you marry me?"

"Taichi…how about asking me when you're not drunk?"

Taichi lay down on the bench and put his head in her lap, closing his eyes and snaking his arms around her waist. "Good idea, Sora-chan," he slurred sleepily.

"I thought so myself," Sora replied, pulling out her book and tilting it to catch the glow of the street lamp. The sky was velvet and dark blue, stars nestled in with the swirling lines of not so dark sky and stubborn clouds.

"Ne, Taichi?" Sora prodded his shoulder with her pencil.

A snore was her answer. Sora took the bottle of alcohol, took a sip, and poured the rest of it out on the pavement, throwing the empty bottle into the trashcan next to her.

**X**

"You know, for someone who thinks that fighting should be a last resort, you're pretty confrontational." Sora sat down next to Yamato, in the only other vacant chair outside the principal's office, and fixed the blond with a disapproving stare. "I'm used to seeing Taichi here, but you? You're the one that tried always to avoid trouble in the Digiworld. Even I wanted to fight a couple of times that you didn't."

Yamato grunted noncommittally, his eyes hidden behind the hair falling in his face and shadowing his features.

Sora leaned over and nudged him with her shoulder, reaching over and resting her hand on his white-sleeved forearm, a feather touch that would put a butterfly to shame. His forearms were slim and strong, and she could feel the muscles shifting beneath her fingertips and his fingers clenched and unclenched, and finally he met her gaze, his eyes resoundingly blue.

"Why were you fighting? Yama, come on. What happened?" Sora allowed her grip to become heavier, and his muscles tensed further. She exhaled sharply, looking at him critically before ducking her head so her bangs tickled her cheeks.

His nose was bloody, crusted and dried brown dribbling over his upper lip, a bruise blossoming over his left cheekbone, and his lip split open. His hair was mussed up, and he looked rather disgruntled. Sora looked down at his hands, and saw that the knuckles on his right hand were split open and bloody and bruised.

She sighed. "You won't be able to come to the movies with us tonight."

Yamato was quiet.

"You're going to be grounded forever. You won't be able to go to band practice. You dad will be _so_ pissed. He'll take your bass away. He'll take your pencil and notebook away, and you know that you don't have another one of either of those. He'll lock you in your room and only let you out to go to school and use the bathroom. He'll take away your hair gel and anti-frizz serum and whatever else shit you put in your hair. He'll slide your dinner under the door through a cat flap. He'll put bars on your windows."

"Sora…"

Sora's eyes were wide with childish amusement, but they softened and returned to normal size as her gaze became serious.

"Why'd you do it, Yama?"

He was quiet, and Sora sighed in exasperation, gesturing to the brown-haired kid sitting across the room in the other chair in the room, his expression sullen and his face a swollen mess of bruises mixed with a bit of blood. From what she'd heard, down in the Humanities section of the school – where all the history and English classes were held, etc., etc. – there were quite a few dents in the locker, courtesy of these two boys and their testosterone getting the better of them.

"Yamato."

His lapis lazuli eyes were remorseful and when he looked up at Sora, she looked away, clasping her hands in her lap, attendance sheet for period one AP U.S. History forgotten on the floor by her Converse-clad feet.

"He called you a bitch, and I punched him."

The statement didn't seem to resonate or echo in the room, and when he said that, there was no emotion in his baritone, smooth as dark chocolate voice. His blue eyes closed up and he seemed to fold into himself, and Sora was shocked, eyes widening and her hand reaching out to rest on his, but he moved it at the last minute and Sora was left hovering stupidly, before she reclasped her hands in her lap and sat there dumbly.

"The teacher's going to wonder if you don't get back to class," Yamato said, voice quiet and taking a tone that he normally only reserved for the likes of Daisuke and Taichi when he was angry and they wouldn't listen to him or see his way. His eyes were darker, true sapphire mingled with navy, and his mouth was a straight line.

Sora's shoulders tensed, and she stood up slowly, without making so much as a sound. "You're right," she replied, voice low and head bowed, bangs tickling her cheeks and covering her eyes again. "I'll see you later, Yamato."

**X**

Sora liked her shoes, the ones from when she was younger and back in Japan and heading off to summer camp, and she used them for soccer for only one season, so they still looked kind of new, even with the mud splatters and the grass stains (so severe that they even showed up on the black) and the scuffed toes and the already fraying laces. Well, not really that new, then, but they still looked cool; now the black was fading into grey and the red was just faded, and the leather was fuzzy and the threads holding the shoes together were split and fraying, and the heels were scuffed, and the back upper lip was dented in and pressed down because Sora had a tendency to jam her feet into them and actually put them on properly later.

Sora also thought that maybe she could make a contrived analogy between her and the shoes. But maybe it wasn't so contrived. She always felt like she was falling apart at the seams, and if not for Mimi and Hikari, she would fade completely, black to grey to an eventual and colorless white. Those shoes from summer camp way back then didn't fit so well now, and it didn't seem like she fit herself, either. When she looked in the mirror, she wasn't the eleven-year-old with the short, flippy hair and chapped, petroleum jellied lips and blue helmet and the yellow tank top. She was Takenouchi Sora, all grown up and the model of excellence, with longer hair, smooth lips, and clothes that weren't so, as Mimi put it, B.C.

Her personality didn't seem to fit her, either. Changes brought changes, and it was an inescapable circle, and she knew that becoming a teenager, getting her fucking period, moving to New York City, going to a magnet school, vying for Columbia or Northwestern was going to change her for good. She wasn't the girl who was somewhat innocent and naïve in believing that she could frost everything over between Taichi and Yamato when they got into fights. She had been mature enough to realize that love wasn't real, despite her crest. She knew Toshiko loved her; it was quiet but apparent through the identical looks they cast each other, the brief touches on shoulders and Sora making breakfast for her in the mornings and Toshiko remembering that Sora liked coffee with Ovaltine. Her father was in California, getting married to another woman, and he sent her Christmas cards, because he couldn't remember her birthday. Aside from the unconditional love her mother provided, love wasn't real, because it wasn't tangible, and Sora didn't believe that intangible things could be real. She was practical and scientifically minded; she didn't believe in God because Immaculate Conception wasn't possible, and otherwise, there really was no proof of divinity, in any religions. Tennis was her religion, where fast service mattered, matches didn't burn, and love meant nothing.

And like her shoes, she knew that she would eventually wear away at the soles, become worthless, and be thrown in the proverbial garbage when her time came.

All of this didn't stop her from feeling, touching, smelling, seeing, and hearing. She was the equivalent of a pair of shoes, but to her, hate and anger and pain were tangible, touchable, hurlable, and when she told her father or soon-to-be stepmother over the phone – when they bothered to call – in cold, clipped tones that she hated them and she heard their sharp, shocked intakes of breath and heard them muttering about how could a young teenage girl be so spiteful, though she couldn't taste and smell over the phone, what mattered was when Sora curled up in her room and fell asleep with salt streaking her cheeks and her heart thudding everywhere, in her stomach and sending her sternum vibrating and making her brain jostle in her head, those emotions were everywhere, touchable, tangible, and sharp.

If she was going to believe in love, it had to be the tangible, touchable, visible, palpable, smellable, audible, tasteable kind, because life was nothing without those five senses. She wanted love that hurt, that made her weak-stomached and loose-lipped and a total jellied mess. She wanted true love, brutal, painful, honest; love that sent her heartstrings twanging, movie-perfect love, with bruising kisses and abrasive grips and being pushed against trees and walls and hands everywhere. She wanted each brush of hands to be an orgasm, each kiss to have the full satisfaction of sex. She suspected, in the back of her mind, that this was all possible, definite love, but for the moment, she was a jaded teenager, and she was waiting.

But she loved those shoes. Faded, battered as they were, they were reminded her of good times, when she was still carefree and she and Taichi were the best of friends and soccer buddies and proud of hanging out together and not caring about whether his guy friends made fun of him or her girl friends made fun of her, and they were accused of K-I-S-S-I-N-G in a tree. Yamato brooded and played his harmonica in the park and elderly men and women threw coins at him, Hikari and Takeru hung on the monkey bars and swung on swings, and Mimi inevitably sat on a park bench and began filing her nails, Jyou and Koushiro alternately ogling her and comparing notes for their summer classes. When the world glowed gold and the sky was blue and everything was in accordance to Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence. (i)

She wanted those days back.

**X**

"He didn't change the name of his band," Mimi said, sitting down across from Sora and sliding her a grande Starbuck espresso and a plate with two chocolate chip biscotti. Mimi sucked cheerfully at the green straw sticking out of her huge mocha Frappuccino and smiled at Sora, preoccupied, as she played with the second biscotti while Sora chomped away at the first.

"Who?"

"Oh, come on, you know who I'm talking about." Mimi rolled her pretty hazel eyes and took another draw from the straw; half her drink was already gone. Sora took the cap of her espresso and blew on the steaming black liquid, taking a tentative sip and promptly burning the roof of her mouth to shreds. Mimi watched her intently, and opened her mouth after a moment. "He's still smoking."

"Good," Sora replied noncommittally. "He'll lose weight."

"He dropped the teenage," Mimi continued, finishing her frappuccino and chomping down on her biscotti, at least half of the cookie disappearing into her mouth. "So it's just the Wolves."

"Fascinating," Sora said, though her face was less than interested.

"What are you so bitchy about?" Mimi asked, dropping the cookie and glaring at her friend. "I'm telling you things, and you're giving me those…what's the word…noncommittal answers and acting like you don't care."

"Not acting," Sora clarified, eyes on the napkin she was shredding.

"Sora, he punched a guy over you. Say, 'Hey, chivalry isn't dead!' and get over it. It's not like he forced you into a corset and told you to cook his supper."

"He didn't want to talk about it, and I don't want to talk to him or about him. So drop the subject, Mimi-chan. Please and thank you."

Mimi sat back and sighed, skewing her fingers through her hair and tousling her loose hair thoroughly. "I don't get why you're so mad about it. It's stupid, Sora, let it go."

The fact of the matter was that Sora didn't know how to explain to anyone why she was mad at her blue-eyed bassist. Yamato lashing out was on par with Buddha raising his voice at someone, because Yamato was aloof and he brooded and he never let his emotions get the better of him. If he was mad, he took it out on his harmonica. If he was sad, he took it out on his harmonica. That instrument spoke more from his soul than his vocal cords, and Sora was sure that without the harmonica as a mouthpiece, Yamato would be even more of an emotional wreck than she was. Yamato losing his cool over something as insignificant as some idiot calling her a bitch signified change, and if Yamato, a rock in the middle of the waterfall that was her life – steadfast, stubborn, unyielding – changed, then her world was upside down and the waterfall was going the other direction of gravity and she had nothing to hold onto.

"You wouldn't get it, Mimi," Sora replied quietly. Mimi rolled her eyes and got up to get another drink, and Sora was left in her thoughts with a half-eaten biscotti and cup of cold espresso.

**X**

She'd saved every single letter she'd gotten from him. Mimi's letters, Taichi's letters, they were jumbled, separated, scattered throughout her messy room, but Yamato's letters – still in their envelopes, written on thin notebook paper, his calligraphy strong and precise, characters tiny, words easy to read, meaning hard to understand – were bound together, chronologically, with a thick rubber band. He was inscrutable in person as he was on paper. Sora always wrote back to him, her calligraphy a bit bubblier but still neat and small, easy to read and easy to understand, and Sora had no doubt that she was one of most superficial people Yamato had the displeasure of knowing.

They all sent letters to each other, when Taichi was in America and no else was, when Yamato was there, desperately trying to hold on to Takeru and keep his family together, when Sora was there and she didn't have Mimi, when Jyou and Koushiro were still waiting for news that they would be joining their friends overseas. Taichi's handwriting was chickenscratch, as could be expected from him, and Mimi's was large and bubbly like in the cutesy _manga_ and on the Japanese talk shows.

They could have sent each other emails, Sora realized later, but never mentioned, because letters seemed so much more personal and seemed to have a chunk of the person's spirit laced and braided in the words. When Sora got a letter she could imagine one of her friends saying the words he or she had written; that wasn't the case with emails. Everything seemed so much colder online and over the Internet, and she didn't like it. She preferred the phone the most, but calls to Japan were expensive, especially since her mother refused to get a calling card, and phone conversations were a luxury the Takenouchi family of two, at the time, could not afford.

She thought that life in Odaiba was easier. Things seemed simpler, because she knew what she was doing and where she was going in life; there were no complications or fifteen millions different paths that she could take, nothing to fuck her life up with, because Odaiba was Odaiba and it was where she'd grown up and she knew the neighborhood like the back of her hand. New York City and Manhattan were still cold and forbidding, and made her feel like a foreigner, despite the Statue of Liberty standing proudly with her arm raised and the torch held aloft. It was clear that she didn't belong, and if she didn't belong in this city, one of the greatest metropolises in the world, where would she fit in?

She missed Odaiba.

**X**

"You are a total idiot."

Sora slammed her locker shut and offered Sato Ayumi the fakest smile possible, wrapping her grey flannel scarf securely around her neck and buttoning her pea coat up quickly.

"How so?" she asked coolly, shouldering her bag and walking past Ayumi.

"The boy got in a fight for you," Ayumi said, matching Sora's strides, stressing the 'fight' and 'you'. "You'd have to be blind or a complete idiot to not understand the implications. And I know you're not an idiot; I've seen you grade in patho."

"Thank you," Sora said, stopping abruptly, "but I have no idea what you're getting at and I don't have time because I have to get home and cook dinner."

"Plenty of guys have called Mimi slut and whore for no good reason, and he's just stood by, cool as can be. He doesn't raise a finger so much as a fist, Sora-san. You know as well as I do that he's normally a very mellow person. Please think about it. Maybe you need glasses, yeah?" Ayumi walked off, pin-straight hair glossy under the bright lights of the hallway, an unreadable look on her face.

Sora was inexplicably confused.

**X**

Sora found it very odd that something Ayumi said would get her mind working. Sure, Ayumi was fairly smart and had the feminine thing down, but Sora didn't consider her to go-to girl; Mimi was her confidant and the one she grilled when her emotions were too confusing for her to sort out. And even then, as Mimi worked her way through Sora's tangled web of feelings, she would confuse Sora even more than Sora, who could long divide mentally and do derivatives like they were quadratic equations, could handle.

So Ayumi's comment got the numerous wheels and gears turning in her head, and she had considered going to Mimi to puzzle out what Ayumi was saying, and she was walking down the sidewalk, prepared to go to Mimi's apartment building, but instead she crossed the street, dodging homicidal cabbies and the occasional motorcycle to go the other way, home. There were enough things to do that she could forget about the real issues at hand for a couple more days.

**X**

Sora liked the apartment that her mother had leased and eventually bought; it was huge, spacious, high ceilinged and airy and on the top floor with only three other families, so it was fairly exclusive. Skylights crisscrossed the ceiling of the large living room; the walls were white and the furniture was dark. The family room, used as a library, on the other side of the apartment was cozier and darker, no skylights, just two comfortable leather recliners, dim lights perfect for reading, and a cluttered desk in the corner with a computer, where Toshiko did her accounting for the flower shop, and on the other side floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with books of every size, paperback, hardcover, yellowing or brand new, in Japanese and English. Sora curled up here often, with a book and a mug of cocoa, or her slim notebook laptop, or her homework.

Sora's room was just off the family room, to the left when she walked in through the front door, walls painted bright margarita green and tangerine orange, but sun didn't come in much at all; the room was normally dim, with the multi-layered white curtains drawn. The bed was huge and queen-sized with gauzy white curtains hanging from the ceiling around it and full of pillows; Sora tended to fall asleep the minute she laid back on it, surrounded by Chococat and Batz Maru and Pocchaco and Hello Kitty. The floor was a mess, covered in clothes both dirty and clean and books and some hazardous materials. Her closet was used of clothes that she didn't normally wear, like the things Mimi insisted she buy, various pairs of shoes and her tennis racquets and cans of tennis balls littering the floor, along with the box of her soccer gear. Her furniture was mellow and white, clean and handles painted green and orange with the leftover wall paint and her cluttered dresser signed in the corner in black paint by Mimi.

Her mother's room was clean, walls white, furniture dark, and bedspread dark blue. The carpet was beige, always vacuumed, and there was little on her dresser and her closet was color-coordinated and organized. Sora couldn't stand that room; she preferred the disorder of her room to live in, though dirtiness other places was intolerable. The kitchen, for example, was all white; white tiles, white walls, white appliances, white dishes, white counters, and they were immaculate and never messy. Sora and her mother could both spot crumbs on the counter from miles off.

Two bathrooms, a formal dining room with a dining table and hutch in rich dark wood, but Sora and Toshiko both preferred to eat at the breakfast bar (also all white), completed their home. It was comfortable and what they had made it what they wanted it to be. Sora wasn't happy with being in New York, even after telling herself that her English was perfect and she fit in as much as she could, but at least she had someplace to go back to when she needed and wanted to.

**X**

When the doorbell rang, Sora had no idea what to expect, since she was done with the meager homework she hadn't been able to do in class, everything for the _sukiyaki_ was cut and chopped and ready for the dinner table, and she wasn't expecting her mother until six, which was when the shop normally closed and was two hours away. She had music on (Hyde), and humming softly, she wiped her hands on a dishtowel, checked the tatty white T-shirt she had changed into for stains, and walked to the door.

She pulled it open and started. "Yamato?"

"Sora, I don't…"

He trailed off and looked her straight in the eye, and she shivered, because no one should be allowed to have eyes so intense, and before she could ask him if something was wrong, what did he want, he had a firm grip on her, guitarist hands abrasively at her slight hips, she found herself pushed back and braced against the wall, and suddenly his mouth was bruisingly on hers, and somewhere in between the front door somehow shut itself.

His lips were slightly chapped but firm and Sora had no idea what to think because she was paralyzed, body and mind. It barely registered that she was pinned between the wall and his slim, hard body, and that he had to duck his head because she was shorter than him. His lips were insistent and his hands were everywhere but always going back to her bare hips and waist (because the shirt was too small and short and that was the reason she wore it only in the house) and his fingers were looping through her belt loops and the waistband of her jeans and she had never thought about this moment between the two of them, how it would all pan out, but it was going in a way that she imagined was perfect, because it _hurt_, him nipping at her bottom lip and at her pulse point, his breath was warm and pepperminty and his skin woodsy-smelling combined with the tang of sweat and the jolt of spice and his lips rough, and those rock star calluses were catching and scraping on her skin and her elbows were resting on his shoulders and her fingers were tangled in his silky hair.

It was grey and rainy outside and the CD played on, soft and mellow, as she relaxed into his arms and they slowly stumbled into her room, and it pittered and pattered outside as rain-scented air swirled around the apartment through the back patio door that she'd opened earlier, and as Sora lay back in her bed with Yamato on top of her, warm and solid, with the muscles of his back shifting beneath her fingertips, she couldn't help but think that Mimi had been right, because she was sixteen and being kissed quite thoroughly.

**A/N: Day-before-my-birthday update for all you superphantastich people. This was originally the fourth chapter. But it seemed better as the fifth chapter; I honestly couldn't tell you why. I was planning on making it the sixth chapter, actually, but… /**

**(i) Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence is really a hard thing to wrap your head around, but the way it's been explained to me is that you must live every moment in your life so that, if you had to relive those moments over and over again, until infinity, it would be a good thing. It's a nice thought, I think. **

**Anyhow, this isn't the end. I have no inspiration for the sixth chapter, however, so the wait might be really long, and I apologize in advance. Any ideas for the next chapter would be greatly appreciated. Email me if you want. I won't think it's creepy. :D Thank you to all my reviewers for the fourth chapter, and since I can't directly reply to these two people…**

Dear Kryssie,  
Thank you so very much for the review. :D I actually had no idea what purple prose was ;; and I had to look it up on Wikipedia before I realized how badly I hate that kind of writing, and I scurried to edit this chapter (many times over) to erase any traces of that dreaded purple-ness. I really hope I did. (TELL ME:O)I never really cared for Sora's more girly character in 02. And I have jeans and shoes like Sora too. Awesome, we're soooo cool. :DI hope my writer's block goes away too. D: (stabs). Thankyew veryyyyy much for reviewing (hug) and I hope that you like this chapter too. )

**&**

Dear Raquel,  
New reviewer, yay! ) I'm glad that you liked all the descriptions, and though I wouldn't say they're genius, the rave review is always appreciated. :)Ahahahaha, Squarenix. I watched Advent Children as soon as my roommate downloaded it, and so when I was trying to think of some sort of interesting job, that was the first thing that came to mind. And OMGCLOUDISTEHPRETTEH (like Yamato). XDI'm glad you liked it. Thank youuu for reviewing, and I hope you like this chapter too. :D

**&**

Dear calilover,  
I really hope this is your idea of making a move. D  
Thankyew for reviewing!

**And everyone else, tell me what you think! I was kind of awkward with the last scene, I think, but I hope I did okay with it. Any other thoughts for improvement are also welcomed. Until the next chapter, loves. Review, please! **


	6. Chapter 6

I own nothing.

**Symphony of Sound: Six**

Tachikawa Mimi was the poster girl for pretty in pink, and Takenouchi Sora was painted in shades of grey. One was yin to the other one's yang, and Sora figured that she was the black.

For when Mimi flipped her gorgeous, perfectly wavy hair over her shoulder, guys noticed and looked on with envy. Sora never had the opportunity to flip her hair, because it was always tied in a precarious ponytail, and anyhow, it wasn't anything special. It was stick-straight and too thick and fell to the middle of her back in choppy layers and an awkward auburn color that didn't match with any nice colors.

Mimi constantly told her that it was a strikingly unique color; that most girls would kill to have hair as thick and straight and smooth as hers, and that it matched with plenty of colors. She even went so far to say that sometimes she wished that she had hair like Sora's.

Sora always scoffed cynically and offered her best friend a half-smile, thanking her for trying.

Sora was the smarter one, intellectually and marginally street-wise, without a doubt, but when they were together, just the two girls and surrounded by boys, she thought that this particular trait was also a curse. Mimi would giggle and flip her hair and make vapid comments and inevitably inflated the boys' egos and made herself look even prettier and possibly even more desirable. Sora would blow her bangs out of her eyes and make a witty comment and the boys would look at her like she was an alien.

Mimi would try various ways to placate Sora, mostly by complimenting her 'assets,' as she called them. She was slim and small-breasted from tennis, with long, slender musculature in her arms and legs and shoulders that rippled and fluttered underneath her skin and hands gorgeous from playing piano and arranging flowers.

"I would kill for your hands," Mimi had sighed once.

But Sora didn't like white boys too much. She didn't really like boys in general; they made her feel even more awkward than she already did. Girls at school carried purses; they didn't have loose change that they stuck in their back pockets and forgot about, like Sora. Even Mimi, who liked being fashionable but didn't like conforming, carried a purse, claiming it was practical and easier to manage.

Sora said she didn't want to have to worry about someone mugging her for her money, and Yamato and Taichi had laughed appreciatively. Mimi would flip her hair and put her nose up in the air, and the boys would set to mockingly appeasing her, getting down on their knees and begging for forgiveness or plucking dandelions and offering them to her with lowered eyes.

Mimi commanded boys across two continents. She still had her fan clubs back in Odaiba, Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, and her inbox would be full of adoring emails sent by many an admirer.

And Sora had never expected to be pushed against a wall and kissed until her lips were swollen and her hips and waist were marked with finger bruises and to be pushed back into her bed and be reduced to a hot, moaning mess underneath a boy who was as emotionally a wreck as her and who had been her best friend for all of her life that counted.

He was stretching his fingers through her hair, curling his hands around the nape of her neck, kissing the column of her throat, her collarbones, her shoulders; his hands drifted to her bra hooks before wandering back up into her hair and down over her hipbones, where he fisted his hands over the jutting bones, pressing down on them and tracing them in a way that made her arch against him and moan into his mouth. She cupped the side of his face where his jawbone met his neck and she scraped her fingernails against his forearms and he groaned every so often and shifted slightly, and she could feel him pressing against her thigh, through the double layer of denim. His lips moved furiously against hers, his tongue dipping in and out of her mouth, and he had her by her hipbones and heartstrings, plucking them in a way that he would guitar strings.

She opened her eyes when his hands moved down to the waistband of her jeans and she tried to sit up, wrenching her lips from his and looking at him for something; she didn't know what.

He tipped his head to the side, as if to say, _only if you want to_, but Sora wasn't sure about what she wanted, and to be safe, she pushed him off, sat up with her legs crossed, and hugged a pillow to her chest to hide the fact that she wasn't wearing a shirt and one of her bra hooks had come undone.

He watched her, his eyes so very blue and adoring and a bit sleepy, and he opened his swollen mouth hesitantly. "I didn't do anything –"

Sora shook her head violently, clutching at the pillow tighter and missing the warmth and weight of him on her, missed his guitarist hands, callused fingers on her shoulders and at her neck, and she sat on her legs, because she knew that any second she wouldn't be able to restrain herself and she would probably jump him.

"It was…" She didn't have the word for what had just happened. "Unexpected. Nice. I don't know, Yamato, it's still sinking in."

It came out harsher than she had intended, and Yamato visibly flinched and got off the bed, bending to pick up his shirt and pulling it over his head slowly. "I'll see you in school tomorrow, Sora."

He was walking to the door, and Sora shot forward and hooked her finger through one of his belt loops and looked at him apologetically. "I didn't mean it like that, Yama."

He sighed and tilted his head down, winding his arm around her waist and pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I have to go anyway. I promised Takeru I'd do something with him tonight."

"You suck at lying, Ishida."

"Not even, Takenouchi."

"I'll see you later," Sora replied, pushing away from him and crossing her arms over her chest. He walked to the front door and shrugged into his jacket and said bye just before the door closed after him.

The apartment was cold, and Sora twisted into an old long-sleeved T-shirt and closed all the windows in the home, pulling the curtains shut and turning the kitchen light on. She changed into flannel pajama pants, brushed her hair, tying it up into one of her messiest ponytails yet, and stumbled almost drunkenly into her room, shutting the door and collapsing into her bed. Her room was dark, her comforter was warm, and when she pulled her knees up to her chest, with her stuffed animals crowding around her, she fell asleep within minutes.

**X**

"What's on your neck?"

Sora started and dropped her pencil when her mother reached forward and pulled down her shirt collar, peering at the red bruise spotting her collarbone, and Sora cursed mentally and leaned away from Toshiko, adjusting her collar and shrugging in what she hoped was a nonchalant manner. "I got hit with a tennis ball in gym."

"How did the ball hit you there?" Toshiko squinted and turned back to the stove, stirring the contents of a saucepan and tasting a bit from the spoon.

"It was a volley and I missed it. The girl hit it funny," Sora replied, bending down to retrieve her pencil. "It doesn't hurt, Mama. I'll put an ice pack on it later if it starts bothering me."

Toshiko nodded, and Sora knew that her mind was already on other things. They ate dinner in silence, Sora finished the English paper that wasn't due for another week, and went to sleep early.

**X**

She changed into a light grey, hooded Northwestern sweatshirt that was a size too big and had soft, fleecy lining, pulled on a pair of low-rise semi-faded denim flares, laced up her Converse, and blew her bangs out of her eyes irritably.

"You're going to be late, Sora!"

Sora cursed, slung her already-packed messenger bag over her shoulder, and ran out the door.

"Coat!"

Sora shoved her arms through the sleeves of her jacket and opening the front door, stepping back a few feet as a gust of icy wind nearly froze her face, and looked back where her mother was standing, wrapped in a bathrobe, holding out a lunchbox patterned with grey and purple kittens.

"Have a good day, Sora."

Sora made a face while putting gloves on and taking the lunchbox, and stepped out into the cold.

**X**

Mimi had a new boy-toy, or rather, as she put it, a wonderful boyfriend who she was going to try her hardest to keep.

Sora rolled her eyes and glanced at her best friend every so often, and Mimi didn't catch her at it, because she was detailing how he was perfect in every single way; that he'd brought her roses on their first date; that he'd only kissed her on the cheek at the end, when he dropped her off at home and walked her all the way up to her apartment; that he held her hand while they walked around in the mall; that he sat on the couch with her legs in his lap while they watched a stupid chick flick and he _didn't_ fall asleep; that he was gorgeous and an amazing guitarist and he had the sexiest voice, and that he was perfect, the epitome of perfection, and she was going to marry him once she finished her undergraduate studies.

His name was Sakamoto Kyo, he was also 19 and studying at Columbia, and did she mention that he had a younger brother about their age?

Sora tempted to tell Mimi that she herself had a boy-toy, for the first time, and a potential boyfriend. She didn't know how to tell her, however, that the boy-toy was Yamato, or that they hadn't talked about their relationship (which had drastically changed, for better or worse), or that she hadn't talked to him all weekend and instead had spent most of her time at the tennis club, hitting serves as hard as possible and working on her ground strokes and lobs.

Mimi would call her pathetic, and Sora would have to agree, simply because she wasn't being proactive or taking advantage of the fact that a very hot boy wanted to have sex with her.

"What're you looking at?" Mimi followed Sora's gaze to the cafeteria doors, where Taichi was standing, talking with the rest of the soccer team; where Koushiro was sitting on the floor, a black binder open in his lap, and where Yamato simply was, leaning against one of the doors, his arms crossed over his chest, while the drummer of his band talked animatedly to him. "Taichi?"

"Mimi, don't even start."

"Well, it can't be Koushiro; I still remember when you told me in eighth grade that you wouldn't go out with guys shorter than you, so…that leaves Yamato."

Sora busied herself with finding a hair tie in Mimi's purse, and began gathering her hair up into an extremely messy bun, blowing her bangs out of her eyes and wrinkling her nose theatrically.

"You're ridiculous and totally not fooling me," Mimi said, leaning forward. "Dish. Otherwise I start singing."

Sora mock-gasped and rolled her eyes. "Nothing happened."

"Don't think I didn't see that hickey on your shoulder, Takenouchi," Mimi replied, pushing her wavy hair behind her shoulders and sitting up straighter. "Don't wear white if you're trying to hide something like that. And I thought you'd tell me what's up, but obviously I have to force it out of you."

Sora slung her bag over her shoulder and stood up quickly, grabbing her lunchbox and walking off.

"I know something's up, Sora-chan. I'm not stupid, you know!" Mimi called after her.

Sora turned around when she was a few feet away from the door and shook her head, glaring at Mimi, and ran into something very solid and un-door-like.

"Hi."

Sora whirled around, coming face-to-face Taichi, who grinned broadly, tossing her soccer ball to her. Sora caught it on reflex and smiled hesitantly back at him, her eyes on Yamato.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine," Sora replied automatically, pushing the soccer ball back to him and crossing her arms over her stomach. "How was your weekend?"

"Good. I called you a couple of times. There was a bottle of tequila under the sink."

"Was?" Sora raised an eyebrow.

"It was damn good, too," he replied, his grin wide, as he turned the ball in his huge hands. The rest of the soccer team laughed and began clapping him on the back, and Sora rolled her eyes and adjusted the strap of her bag. "I've got to go, Taichi. I'll see you after school, I guess. If you come by the club."

Taichi shrugged in a maybe-baby sort of way, Sora reached forward and pushed at his right shoulder, and walked away.

"God, Tai, why do you always hang with all the hot girls?"

Sora rolled her eyes as she heard the rest of the soccer team join in with questions about if she was single or if she wanted to hook up, and passed through the doors, pointedly ignoring Yamato and the drummer, Stefan, who called her name cheerfully, and when she reached her locker, she sank to the floor, pulled her legs up to her chest, rested her head on her knees, and tried to figure out why that stupid boy had to go and kiss her and ruin everything.

**X**

She, unfortunately, couldn't avoid him in chemistry, so when she sat down at the lab table and set her notebook and pencil case down, she was expecting him to chew her out for ignoring him or avoiding him, or not talking to him at all over the weekend.

He did nothing, actually. When he came in, a yellow pencil behind his ear and his thin, tattered notebook in his right hand, he sat down, opened the notebook, and began to copy down the information on the board.

Sora was perplexed and wished that Mimi had taken chemistry with her instead of taking AP biology because Jyou would be able to help her with it. She hated that she didn't know what to say to the boy sitting next to her, that she had already finished all the homework and read ahead in the book, and she suddenly wished that she had skipped class and gone to the tennis club again. Her volleys needed work, too, when she thought about it; her placement was a bit skewed. Or maybe she needed a new racquet.

The teacher walked in with two beakers full of coppery red liquid, and Sora sighed, put her head down on the table, and prepared herself for another fifty minute class period that was of no use to her.

**X**

"Sora!"

Sora looked up as Yamato was walking towards her, and she rolled her eyes and stuck her head in her locker. He came closer, standing straight up for once instead of leaning, and Sora sighed and turned around to look at him.

"What, Yamato?"

"We need to talk."

"Like you talked to me in chemistry?" Sora asked, dropping a slim novel and her English notebook into her bag and slamming the locker shut a little harder than necessary.

"Like you talked to me before school and in the lunch room and over the weekend?" Yamato countered.

"Oh, like you couldn't call me?" Sora put her coat on and began walking, not bothering to see if he was following her.

He grabbed her by the arm, in the same spot that he had grabbed her that Friday evening, right before he had shoved her against the wall, and Sora wrenched herself out of his grasp and glared furiously.

"You could have called me," Sora replied. "You didn't say anything before you left, just told me that you had to do something with Takeru. Quote unquote."

"I did!" Yamato raked his hair out of his eyes and matched her glare with his. "You can ask him yourself, if you want. Fuck, Sora, you're impossible sometimes."

"And you're insane," Sora replied, rubbing her arm and shifting on the spot. People were watching from their lockers, nudging and whispering to each other, and Sora didn't like that. "Let's go somewhere; people are staring."

Yamato looked at her, exasperated and helpless all at once, and Sora sighed, reached forward, and took his hand in her much smaller one. "Come on."

**X**

"Why am I insane?"

Sora crossed her legs and rested her elbows on her thighs, thinking.

_Because I'm a basket case and you're emotionally scarred and can you imagine how that would be in the long run? I'm oversensitive and you get pissed off easily, and we're too alike, Yamato-san. You're in over your head. This is like a flame near a stick of dynamite; it's all going to explode at any second._

"No reason," she said, instead.

"Do you want to do this?" He was sitting in his recliner, feet firmly on the ground and his gaze serious. "I don't want to hurt you, Sora-chan. We've been through too much for our friendship to end over a kiss."

Of course I want this, idiot. I'm self-destructive and you're gorgeous, and I'm pulling you down with me.

Sora looked at him appraisingly and flopped back on the sofa, opting to stare at the ceiling instead of into his eyes, which were expecting or asking too much of her. "I don't know, Yamato."

"I hate when you say my name like that."

"Yeah, well, I hate when people put me in positions like this," Sora snapped. "You couldn't have just…told me you like me?"

"The other way was more fun."

Sora sat up and shot Yamato an are-you-serious? glare, and he looked at her levelly, his face and eyes giving away nothing. Sora settled on telling him he was ridiculous and that he was such a guy, and he threw a pillow at her.

"What do I have to do to make this work?" He asked, serious again, as he sat down on the floor beside her and hovered over her.

She didn't know, and it scared her. He had given her everything she wanted: love that hurt, passion that was tangible, and it had all been brutal and painful and honest and amazing. It had hurt, when he had kissed her like that, she had been weak-kneed and weak-stomached and weak-brained and she would do anything for him that he wanted if he asked between kisses, and that scared her even more, because vulnerability allowed for being taken advantage of, and Sora didn't like being out of control.

And she didn't know how to tell him that he was perfect. Because he was. In the end, they were both vulnerable, jaded teenagers stumbling through life, feeling around awkwardly for things that felt right, and maybe this felt right.

She sat up. Yamato watched her almost passively.

_What do you have to do? Kiss me again_, and for once, she said what she thought.

"Kiss me."

And he did, so perfectly and eloquently that Sora wanted to cry. It was gentle enough, soft enough, so full of passion and repressed feelings that Sora was able to forget that she was inherently pessimistic and this relationship was inherently going to fail and they would probably be completely destroyed at the end. But he was so gentle, and this kiss was the sweetest thing she had ever experienced, and she didn't know if she preferred this to what had happened last week, or even if she cared. He pulled away slowly and rested his forehead against hers.

"So…?"

Kissing him made her feel sleepy and so very content, and she smiled and looked at him through her lashes. "I don't know."

So he leaned forward again, smiling almost devilishly, and he wrapped his fingers around her thin wrist and placed his lips on hers, and they fell back on the couch, him on her, legs tangled with legs and her fingers clutching at fistfuls his soft hair and his hands at her jutting hipbones. Sora wondered how she could have ever been so jaded about love, and maybe, if he kissed her like this all the time, this thing they had going might work.

**A/N: I had JJ Lin's 'Bu Si Zhi Shen' and Juanes' 'Día Lejano' on repeat for this chapter, so go download those songs. If you don't have them already, that is. :)**

**I love Apple for inventing the iPod. Really, truly. X3;;**

**I love all of you for reviewing the last chapter, so thank you very much. I hope I answered all your burning questions, and if I didn't, send me angry messages or throw things at me. And tell me what you think. :O You can even flame me for not updating for so long, if you like. I like the chapter okay, but I don't know if there's enough character development and stuff. **

**And I swear I was going to end the story somewhere in the middle of the last scene. But then I realized that it would make for a shitty ending/ story. There needs to be conflict! Teen angst! Violence! Death! Stuff! **

**More ideas for future chapters, please? (hands out cookies)**

**Thank youuu.**


	7. Chapter 7

I own nothing.

**Symphony of Sound: Seven**

"You're going to have to tell me eventually." Mimi leveled her with a glare that was meant to be lethal, but the thin white ribbon tied in her hair detracted from the threat she was trying to convey.

"Or I could take a vow of silence," Sora replied, her lips quirking as she took a sip her soda and pushed it towards Mimi, who refused.

"You have to know what this is doing to me," Mimi wailed, putting her hand to her forehead and striking a tragic pose. "Worrying about this on top of my SAT II's is going to ruin me, don't you know? I can't take that much thinking."

"Shut up, Mimi, you're not stupid," Sora replied, almost automatically, examining the sleeve of her sweatshirt, which was too loose and ended well past her fingers. "You'll do fine on them."

"Says the girl who got perfect scores on everything."

"I didn't, Mimi, and I don't try to," Sora replied, shrugging helplessly and wishing that she had stayed at home and not answered the phone.

"You're making me feel even worse," Mimi replied, propping her elbows on the table and playing with the cuffs of her sweater. It was thin, sea green, with a wide neckline that just barely hung off her shoulders, worn over a white camisole, with skinny black pants and ballet flats. A pearl necklace hung down to her stomach, and her hair was done up in a neat bun at the nape of her neck.

Sora felt very underdressed next to her, even though they were only at the mall, in the light grey, hooded Northwestern sweatshirt that was a size too big and had the soft, fleecy lining, and a pair of faded denim flares that were ridiculously low-rise and ridiculously frayed at the hems. Her hair was thrown back into a bun, though it had no semblance to Mimi's, and her bangs were in her eyes.

"Tell me, Sora-chan. I didn't buy you the soda for nothing."

"And here I was, thinking you're my friend," Sora replied, rolling her eyes.

"Tell me."

"Fancy seeing you here."

Sora looked up, and Taichi grinned down at her; Mimi's smile was strained, and Yamato looked irritated.

"Fancy my ass," Sora replied, shifting to her left and watching as Yamato slowly lowered himself into the seat next to her.

"I'm sure your ass is quite fancy, and you look nice," Taichi added, grinning at Mimi.

"Shut up, asshole." Mimi replied, also moving to make room for Taichi, crossing her arms over her stomach and leaning back against the chair.

"She's meeting Kyo," Sora added, smiling as Taichi wiggled his eyebrows almost suggestively and dropped an arm over Mimi's shoulder.

"When do we get to meet this guy, eh?"

"What are you, my parents?" Mimi asked irritably, shrugging him off and slouching slightly, crossing her right leg over her left.

"Have your parents met him?" Sora countered.

"Yes. What do you think?"

"You never introduced Hiro to them."

"That's because he was a stalker and I didn't want them freaking out and getting the authorities on his tail."

"Oh, please," Sora replied, making a face. "You liked him, genuinely. He liked you because you acted like a child prostitute."

"Acted?" Taichi said, raising his eyebrows. Mimi aimed a punch in his general direction, catching him in the chest and smiling slightly when he grunted.

"When?" Taichi insisted.

"Shut up, Neanderthal, maybe I won't introduce you two just for that."

They began arguing, and Sora would have pointed out that Mimi's hair was falling out of her bun and that her cheeks were getting awfully flushed and that Taichi could leave bruises on her skin simply by holding her wrist in his hand, but Yamato's proximity was awfully distracting, especially since he was leaning closer and closer and his breath was ghosting over her cheek and ear and just as his hand found hers and their fingers were slowly twining together, a shadow fell across the table, Mimi squealed, jumping up, and Taichi looked dumbfounded.

"Hi."

Kyo was gorgeous by anyone's standards; his hair was pitch-black, shaggy, tousled and straight, and a bit long, covering the nape of his neck and falling in his dark, dark, dark brown eyes. He had a bit of stubble scattered across his jaw and cheeks and chin, but it seemed to suit him. He was tall and lean, with moderately broad shoulders and slim hips, and the smile on his face was genuine as he looked at Mimi.

The boy leaned over and kissed Mimi sweetly on the cheek, sweeping a loose tendril of hair out of her eyes, smiling and kissing her again, this time on the lips.

"You look pretty."

"Thanks," Mimi managed to stammer out, looking ridiculously pleased.

Kyo turned his attention to the group, glancing at Yamato disinterestedly, lingering on Sora, and finally stopping on Taichi.

"Hey."

"Hi," Taichi replied, standing up. They shook hands, casually, though they both looked incredibly tense.

"Ex?" Kyo asked, wrapping his arm around Mimi's waist and pulling her closer.

"Friend," Taichi replied coldly, and Sora could see the muscles in his arms twitching as he flexed his fingers.

"Oh." Kyo shrugged indifferently. "You look like you two could've dated."

Sora was watching the exchange with interest; Taichi looked like he was going to have a hernia, Kyo looked like he was having great fun with agitating him, and Yamato was, as always, impassive.

"C'mon, Kyo-chan, let's go," Mimi said, tugging on sleeve and glancing at Taichi cautiously. "I'll see you later, Sora-chan. Bye, Yama-kun." She paused, pursing her lips. "Bye, Yagami." She shouldered her purse, a huge, slouchy bag made of white leather, smiled at Sora and Yamato, and walked off, chattering cheerfully as Kyo nodded and slowly slid his hand into her back pocket.

"That's disgusting," Taichi said, sitting back down and taking Sora's soda, downing it in a go and tossing the cup into a nearby trashcan. "I thought she had some self-respect."

"You have no right to talk about PDAs and self-respect," Sora said, her eyes narrowing and her voice deadly.

"I've told you, man," Yamato said, cutting Sora off. "She's going to figure it out someday."

"Figure what out?" Sora kicked Taichi underneath the table and glared at him. "Tell me."

"You're not stupid, you figure it out yourself," Taichi replied, slouching slightly, and Sora was sure that she saw some red coloring the deep tan of his cheeks.

Sora's mouth stretched into a smile that was almost too big for her face, and Taichi reached forward and slapped her lightly on the cheek. She rubbed the spot, ignoring Yamato's indignant snarl, and continued to grin stupidly. "How long?"

Taichi grunted, crossing his arms over his stomach.

"How long?" Sora kicked him again, and Taichi winced, sitting up and moving his legs to the side. "Tell me, baka-chan, otherwise I'll tell Yamato about the time –"

"Christ," Taichi interrupted, glowering furiously. Sora smirked, Yamato poked her in the side and demanded to know what they were talking about, and Taichi sighed.

"Well?"

"Last year."

"Last year!" Sora sat forward, her eyes wide, grabbing for Taichi's hands and tugging on them. "Jesus, how'd you keep your cool for that long?"

"He hasn't," Yamato replied, smirking.

"Ew, Yamato," Sora said, wrinkling her nose and dropping Taichi's hands immediately. Yamato laughed and Taichi's face froze into a scowl.

"Yeah, well, don't call me pathetic. Yamato here –"

"Will be punching your face in if you don't shut up," Yamato finished, glaring. Taichi flicked him off, and Sora kicked him again.

"Ow, shit, you bitch!"

"Tell me why."

"Fucking Inquisition…"

"Just answer the question, asshole."

**X**

"You know that Yamato's a hot commodity."

Sora sat idly, twirling a pen between two fingers, stopping every so often to jot notes down as the teacher lectured at the front, drawing diagrams and arrows all over.

"You know that, right?" Mimi leaned to the side, stabbing Sora in the arm with her pencil, and Sora glared at her, rubbing the spot.

"I know, stupid. Leave me alone."

"That's not going to work on me, Sora," Mimi replied, shaking her pencil the redhead. "You know that when there's a scoop, I'll get to the bottom of it."

"Go to Baskin Robbins, then."

"You're not funny," Mimi replied. She crossed her eyes when Sora glanced at her, and sighed when Sora looked away. "C'mon, you know that, right? He's a hot commodity. There're at least five girls that would be happy to get their dirty paws on him if he gave them the time of day."

"Which he won't," Sora replied absentmindedly, sketching in the margins of her notebook.

"He might if you reject him."

"How do you know that he's made a move?"

"Please, that hickey didn't manifest itself."

Sora laughed softly and rolled her eyes, turning to the side in her chair and folding her legs underneath her. "Manifest?"

"I've been studying. Don't make fun of me."

"I'm not; it's just a funny word to use in the context of a hickey."

"Are you going to listen to me or not?"

"Not. This is stupid." Sora turned back to the front, closing her notebook up and putting her pencil away.

The bell rang, and Sora stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder, adjusting the strap and pulling the flap down to close it.

"Come on, you know what I'm talking about," Mimi hissed, walking next to Sora, her high heels clicking rapidly against the tile floor as she matched Sora's pace. "He's tall, handsome, a musician, kind of dangerous, and Jesus, those _eyes._ Sora."

Sora stopped and faced her reluctantly, glaring and tugging at her hair tie. Mimi put her hands on her hips, her elbows sticking out at right angles, and leveled Sora with a surprisingly honest stare; Sora looked away.

She turned her head to the left, to the right, and finally met Mimi's gaze. "What does this have to do with me telling you what happened between me and him?"

Mimi thought, and her face hardened and her mouth set in a straight line. "Nothing." Mimi stormed past her, her shoulder brushing roughly against Sora's, to her locker, which was barely fifteen feet away.

"Mimi!"

Mimi was spinning the dial, stopping on thirty-four, twisting left twice to fifteen, and turning back right to seven. She opened the locker and threw her books in, grabbing her coat and slamming the door shut. "I'm not talking to you."

"Yes, you are." Sora grabbed her wrist, Mimi yanked it away, and turned around, glaring furiously.

"I tell you everything. If you're going to be such a fucking bitch–,"

Sora sighed, grabbed Mimi's wrist, and dragged her out of the school. They struggled along the sidewalk and across the street, Sora pulling determinedly and Mimi resisting and muttering to herself furiously, and they finally stopped a few blocks away from the school, when Sora was too tired to keep towing her friend along. Mimi wrenched her arm away, rubbing her wrist, and glowered at Sora.

"I really do tell you everything," Mimi said, quietly. "I tell you things that I don't even tell my mom. You were right; my parents don't know about Kyo. He's older, Sora. He's in college. He looks dangerous, and he's too good looking for them to trust me with him or him with me. Taichi wasn't supposed to either, because he's an overprotective asshole; I don't even know why." She paused, crossing her arms over her stomach and watching Sora; tears were beading at the corners of her eyes, and Sora felt like shit. "Are we even friends anymore?"

Sora threw her arms around her, muttering yes twice and hugging her fiercely, as if she could convince her through such a simple gesture.

Mimi sighed, pushing her away and carefully wiping her tears away. "Please tell me what's going on with you and Yamato. It's a different vibe. Taichi was asking me about it yesterday."

"And because the hickey didn't manifest itself?" Sora looked at Mimi, her eyes smiling hopefully.

"Shut up!" Mimi laughed, slapping Sora on the shoulder. "I told you, I've been studying."

"Okay, okay. I'll tell you."

Mimi nodded, looking extremely pleased. "Good."

"So last Friday…"

**X**

"Your hair is like satin."

"Aw, thanks, Yama. Your fingers are pretty."

"Fingers?"

"And your eyes, and your hair, and your voice, and your smile, and maybe your jaw too." Sora reached up and brushed her knuckles against his jaw, smiling when he looked at her curiously.

"Pretty is such a girly word."

"Yeah, but if you were masculine, I wouldn't like you so much."

"I'm not masculine?"

"Not gross masculine. Appropriate masculine."

"Pretty-masculine."

Sora smiled. "Yes."

Yamato twined his fingers with hers and pulled her closer, if that was even possible, and Sora leaned against him, poking at the fabric of his parka and looking at their clasped hands, his thumb over hers, her skin tanner than his, and the way their knuckles protruded. For some reason, she felt very close to tears, because there was that lump in her throat that she couldn't swallow down, and her eyes felt liquid. It was just them breathing, crammed comfortably close into the recliner in her living room, Sora's left leg crossing over Yamato's right, and the apartment was quiet, a bit chilly, but very comfortable. His breath was warm on her cheeks, and Sora wanted to grab him and kiss him senseless, but that would ruin the moment.

"Your wrists are nice," he said, tracing the bones of her hand down to her wrist. His touch was soft, light.

"And your smile is perfect."

"There's no such thing as perfect." Sora told him, and Yamato's gaze was serious.

"The idiot who said that didn't see you smile."

Sora was silent, Yamato was silent, and the heating unit hummed in the background.

"And he probably never had a moment like this."

**X**

"My brother needs a girlfriend."

Sora laughed. "Tell me about it."

Hikari looked at Sora determinedly. "No, seriously. We need to hook him up with some blonde cheerleader type who'll give him a blow job, because I think he's depressed."

Sora wrinkled her nose. "Nice mental image."

Hikari paused, obviously thinking, and shuddered. "Nix the blow job. Maybe just someone to hook up with. Someone to make out with for an hour. A one-night stand. Hell, a quickie in an alley would be good. We just need something to get his spirits up."

"Isn't it disgusting that guys need sex to get their spirits up?"

"We're talking about strictly sexual spirits in this case, I guess."

"Still gross."

"Yeah."

Sora was looking at Hikari with interest, and the brunette made a face at her. "What?"

Sora opened her mouth, shut it, and considered. "You've gotten older, is all."

Hikari looked at her seriously and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "We all have, Sora-chan."

Sora was quiet, prodding the food on her lunch tray with her fork and picking at a lock of hair. "I wish we were back in Odaiba. It was perfect there."

Hikari laughed. "You told me there's no such thing as perfect."

"Exactly," Sora said. "There's no such thing as perfect, but Odaiba managed it."

"Odaiba wasn't perfect," Hikari insisted. "You told me, Sora-chan, when I was ten, that there was no such thing as perfect." She peered at Sora, and Sora chewed quietly on her semi-edible food and thought, while Hikari shifted in her seat and put a crumpled napkin on her plate. "It wasn't Odaiba, Sora, it was the fact that we were all there, and we had those moments."

Sora nodded, because she knew that Hikari was right; she wished desperately that she could freeze moments and exist in them only, like freezing time and forgetting about everyone else. Being eleven in Odaiba had been perfect. Green grass, blue skies, black and white soccer balls, big blue goggles, pink cowboy hats, red and black soccer shoes, and Yamato's harmonica; it had all been there.

But the truth was that there was no way to freeze a moment. They were as elusive and slippery as the truth, brushing against Sora's fingertips and ghosting away. Sora wished that she could live from moment to moment, but she couldn't capture each and every single one and if she did, she couldn't figure out how to jump to the next moment, because two had already happened. Moments were snapshots, and Sora was no good with cameras.

"They're not supposed to last," Hikari had said once. "They're supposed to linger for only a second, so we know what pure emotion feels like, and then they leave, because you know what they say about too much of a good thing, Sora-chan."

Hikari, however, was good with cameras, and Sora thought that she could afford to say that. They had been in her darkroom once, when Hikari was waiting for her pictures to dry so they could go see a movie, and the shots were hung up on the clothesline, the images slowly fading into view.

"I can't remember exactly how happy I was at the moment," she said, as she took the photos down, her lips curving slightly at the sight of Takeru's cheerful, laughing face, "but I do remember that at that moment, everything felt right in the world, and I want a record of the things that can make me feel that way."

Hikari was terrifyingly philosophical and unnaturally serious at an age where all she was supposed to care about was boys and her hair. She smiled and laughed, but when she thought no one was looking, her lips set into a solemn straight line and her eyes glassed over. Sora knew that Taichi was frightened out of his mind by his sister's behavior, especially after what had happened in the Digiworld, and he did everything he could to keep her from thinking back.

And it made Sora sad that none of them had been able to retain the childish sentiments of hope and confidence; they had helped immensely in the Digiworld, and Sora found it ironic that NYC could pose a greater challenge than a world of zeroes and ones.

Hikari turned and looked at her questioningly, Sora's chest tightened suddenly, and then the world was back to normal.

"Are you okay, Sora-chan?" Hikari asked, touching her shoulder lightly.

Sora nodded. "Everything's alright."

**X**

"Taichi, stop drinking. You're going to go into a coma and die."

Taichi laughed and slid the glass bottle across the table, the amber liquid inside splashing up against the sides. "Too young to die, Takenouchi." He put a cigarette to his lips and the butt glowed firefly-yellow while he blew the smoke into her face.

Sora winced. "Taichi…"

"C'mon, Sora, what am I supposed to do?"

"Stay alive."

Taichi chuckled bitterly. "You of all people, Sora-chan—I never pegged you as an idealist."

"I'm practical, fucktard."

He laughed again, drunkenly this time, and Sora watched as he propped his feet up in her lap and exhaled another cloud of smoke. "We all die, Sora."

"Why make it earlier than later?"

"Life is pointless as it is, isn't it? It's a slow process of dying, and who's going to remember me, anyhow? You? You're going to die. So is Yamato; so is Mimi; Takeru; Jyou; Koushiro; Hikari…"

His voice was choked up, and Sora pushed his feet off her legs, walked over and slid into his lap, and put her arms around his neck, and he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face into her shoulder, and Sora could feel the hot tears skating crystal-like over her skin and dampening her shirt.

"I don't know what I'm doing, Sora-chan, I don't know what I'm doing. Hikari's going to die and I can't do anything to stop it and I don't know how to tell Takeru and Mimi's with that guy and you and I aren't friends like we used to be, and…" His voice was muffled against her chest as he trailed off.

Sora didn't know what to do, because she was crying now also, so she just pulled him closer, holding on to him as hard as she could, as his shoulders shook and the tears fell.

**A/N: We had a snow day today. :D Which gave me sufficient time to finish editing this and posting it. Happy December!**

A kid at our school died the night before I wrote this; so all the emotion came out in the last scene here. Don't read into any of what Taichi says, because I don't know where any of this is going. I'm so tired right now that I might as well be drunk. 

**I apologize profusely for the long wait. I hope the chapter is good enough, considering the length of time that I had to write it. **

**And, of course, happy Thanksgiving!**

**I love your reviews. They make me feel warm and fuzzy and appreciated. :) **

**P.S. I hate chapter six, so things might change dramatically in contrast to everything that happened there. Just thought you should know. **

**P.P.S. Review some more! A warm, fuzzy writer-person is a good writer-person. D**


	8. Chapter 8

I own nothing.

**Symphony of Sound: Nine**

Sora was well aware of the inevitability of all good things coming to an end, but she hadn't thought that her life could take such a turn for a supposed worse. Thinking back to the better days only made her feel depressed, even though her life at that moment was anything but unsatisfactory.

She stretched languidly, lifting her arms above her head and curling her toes, and sighed, flipping over on her stomach. For all of her overachieving in high school, graduating third in her class (Koushiro had been valedictorian, and Sora couldn't have been prouder), and getting perfect scores on all of her standardized tests, she had gone to Columbia to find that most people were on her level and that her brand of dispassionate learning wouldn't help her at all in college. She'd changed, to accommodate her new surroundings and probably simply because it was for the better: she was majoring in something she was actually interested in (she had decided halfway through senior year journalism was her calling), she was doing research and taking classes and, tritely enough, finding herself.

She threw her textbook aside and winced when she heard two dull thumps and unpleasant sort of crash reverberate through the small room.

"Sora?" One of her suitemates, a pretty Korean girl named Hyori, poked her head into the room and looked at her questioningly. "Are you okay?"

"Mmpf," Sora replied, burying her head into her pillow. "I'm fine," she said, lifting her head and smiling.

Hyori grinned, toying with the headphones looped around her neck. "We're going out tonight; Aimee promised she'd get us into the club. A Japanese band is playing."

"I don't like Dir en Grey," Sora replied, getting up reluctantly and rubbing her face. She skimmed her hands over the comforter beneath her and grabbed a hair tie.

"No, not them," Hyori said, laughing. "New band. Something to do with Bibles, but Aimee wasn't very clear. They're touring the country; they're in New York for a week."

"I don't know, Hyori-chan," Sora said, sliding her feet into a pair of thickly padded slippers and standing up, stretching again. "I have to start that ethics paper, and there's that problem set that's due in a week."

"Sora-yah, you're nineteen. You're in your second year in college. You're supposed to be procrastinating, having fun, living it up…"

"Fine, fine, stop nagging." Sora tossed her hair back into a haphazard bun, blew her bangs out of her face, and padded to the bathroom with her towel slung over her shoulder. "I'm washing my face, not drowning myself. Don't worry."

Sora shut the bathroom door on Hyori's cheerful laugh and hung the towel over the rack to her right, glancing at her reflection in the mirror and sighing. She looked more or less the same as she had in junior year, though she didn't know why she was reminiscing so much. Her hair was still almost unmanageably thick and hung past her shoulders in shaggy layers; her bangs still tangled with her eyelashes and brushed against her cheekbones. She'd realized that the bags under her eyes were perpetual, that she would always be slender to the point that her ribs swam under her skin like fish did underwater, and that she would always be short.

She washed her face, applied foundation to the dark skin under her eyes, and blinked rapidly, opening her eyes widely in the end to examine her reflection. She'd also changed, though that was to be expected. During the summer before college her optometrist had informed her that she needed glasses, her doctor had told her that she would probably collapse from exhaustion if they didn't get her sleeping pills for her insomnia, and her mother had told her that she wouldn't be going to college if she didn't start smiling more.

Sora lifted her glasses from the counter, examining the slim, black wire-rimmed frames before putting them on and pushing them up the bridge of her nose. She undid her hair, shook it out, and brushed it, and tied it into a neater, lower ponytail, puffing her bangs out of her eyes and examining her reflection before shrugging and turning the light off.

The need for glasses was a result of Sora's insomnia: she stayed up late, read books with small print in insufficient light, and watched TV at three in the morning. Her insomnia was a result of her inability to smile, which was a result of small-scale depression that stemmed from the fact that she and Yamato had broken up and Yamato had moved back to Japan.

Their break had been clean, if not unsuspected and uncalled for, in Sora's opinion. After graduation and the subsequent two weeks of parties, Yamato had called her one night and asked him to meet her in the park. He'd been sitting on a park bench with his legs crossed and his eyes closed, and she'd woken him up with a kiss and a palm pressed to his stomach. He had smiled, pulled her closer, and they had sat there as fireflies blinked in the dusk.

He broke up with her around midnight, after he walked her home and told her that he was moving back to Japan; a record company had agreed to sign him after he sent in some demo tapes. He hadn't told Sora in case nothing came from it, but he was leaving, and she needed to know. Besides, he had reasoned, she was going to college and she didn't want a long-distance relationship tying her down.

Sora had cried and hit him and told him not to act like some sort of savior, like he was doing her a favor by breaking up with her. He had shrugged helplessly and kissed her forehead, told her that she was going to do great things that he couldn't measure up to, and he didn't want to bring her down. She didn't understand and he didn't expound; all she knew was that she was going to college, Yamato was going back to the motherland, and the glass of her world was shattering just when she thought she had everything taped in place.

Yamato left without calling her, and she hadn't been in touch with him since that night. There was a picture of him on her desk in her dorm room; when Hyori first saw it, she had let out some sort of low wolf-whistle and asked Sora what she had been thinking in letting him go. Sora had shrugged and smiled sadly, and Hyori had patted her on the shoulder sympathetically and offered to get ice cream.

"Mimi called," Aimee called from the living room, tossing Sora's cell phone to her. Sora caught it on reflex and looked at her other suitemate dumbly.

"What?"

"She's on break for the next three weeks and wants to know if you're free," Aimee said patiently, concentrating on the toenail she was meticulously painting. "You're coming to the club with us tonight, yeah?"

"Yeah," Sora replied.

"Call Mimi. I haven't seen her in a while," Aimee said.

"Yeah," Sora said. "Neither have I." She walked into her room and shut the door, twisting the lock into place and picking up clothes that littered the floor. Her cell phone rang again, buzzing cheerfully as the display glowed erratically. She ignored it and continued picking up clothing and tossing it into her hamper, adding laundry to her mental to-do list.

Mimi had gone off to Los Angeles to study fashion and design, and she called every so often to report that she was thriving and flourishing and couldn't wait to get back to New York to see Sora. Koushiro had gone off to Harvard to study law; Jyou was at Johns Hopkins, studying to become a doctor, and Taichi was studying business at Northwestern. He had been shocked and ecstatic when he found the thick envelope in the mail. Hikari had gone to NYU last year to study photography, and Takeru had gotten an athletic scholarship to Duke. Nothing had become of Mimi's short-lived relationship with Kyo, but nothing had happened with Mimi and Taichi either. They had drifted, just as all the other Digidestined had. Mimi calling Sora would be the first time in two months, and they would be seeing each other after almost six months.

"Tell her to come clubbing with us," Hyori said, stepping into Sora's room.

"Didn't I lock it?" Sora asked, pushing her hair out of her eyes and looking up.

Hyori shrugged and showed Sora an unbent bobby pin.

"I could have been changing."

"Oh, darling, it's nothing I haven't seen before." Hyori wiggled her eyebrows and laughed, and Sora shook her head, grinning to herself.

She had met Hyori at their freshman orientation; Sora had been stunned by the activity and sheer size of the campus and Hyori had whirlwinded over to her, sucked her in, and kept her close. She had been born in Korea, moved to the city when she was three, and still spoke fluent Korean, if with something of an accent. She was cute, with wide brown eyes and thick, highlighted chestnut-brown hair cut in long, sophisticated layers. She and Sora majored in the same thing and shared two classes, and were best friends on campus; extremely close friends off-campus. Aimee she had met in class on the second day of school; they'd sat next to each other, and Aimee, who was loud, outgoing, and just the migraine-in-a-bottle that Sora needed to stay awake, had extended her hand, introduced herself, and suggested that they be best friends. Aimee was pretty in the more-than-skin-deep sort of way; she had big, bottle-blue eyes and long, spiraled white-blond hair and she did good things on impulse. Sora had introduced her to Hyori, the three had hit it off fantastically, and the rest, as they say, was history. Or, they decided to share a suite together.

"Wear this," Hyori demanded, extending an arm from Sora's wardrobe, a skimpy silver tank top dangling from her fingers.

"With the black hot pants," Aimee said enthusiastically, entering the room.

"The tank top is yours, and I hope neither of you own hot pants," Sora replied, wrinkling her nose. "Jeans and a T-shirt, okay? I don't feel like dressing up."

Hyori raked her fingers through her choppy hair and huffed out a sigh, putting her hands on her hips. "Only you, Sora-chan."

"Only me," Sora agreed genially, reaching past Hyori and grabbing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Hyori wrinkled her nose, threw the clothing back into the wardrobe, and rummaged around a bit.

"Here."

A satiny black babydoll dress that would slouch off her shoulders, with long, flowing black sleeves and an impossibly brief hem. Sora wrinkled her nose. She didn't remember ever owning anything like that.

"Wear these shoes"—Hyori pulled a pair of standard black heels from the depths of the closet—"do something cute with your hair, and you'll be set."

"This isn't dressing up?"

"Please," Aimee drawled. "You're going to look like Japanese trailer park trash when you stand next to us."

"Aimee, there's no such thing as Japanese trailer park trash."

Aimee laughed. "There will be when you stand next to us."

Sora threw a sock at her friend, and Hyori and Aimee disappeared, giggling madly.

**X**

Sora still had dreams about Yamato. She thought it was vaguely pathetic that she chose to dwell a relationship (her only serious relationship) that had ended so abruptly and so one-sidedly, but she figured that Yamato knew her too well to consider her seriously, and she was too jaded to think of it from any other perspective. Despite this, there were still times where she woke up at two or three in the morning, sweaty and hot and hating herself for dreaming about the times he had pushed her back against walls and kissed her like she mattered.

Mimi told her once, before she moved away to Los Angeles, that best friends weren't meant to be lovers. She had also told Sora that the person who stole your first kiss was the person you were meant to be with, but Sora chose to take the former piece of advice to heart. You knew each other too well, Mimi reasoned, to be intrigued by each other. There was no initial mystery or excitement; it was like getting married. The description wasn't very appealing to Sora, and though it didn't exactly ring true, it made more sense to her than Yamato's seemingly-weak excuse of not wanting to hold her down.

She looked over at her desk and at her picture of Yamato. He was smiling one of his half-smiles, his eyes guarded and his shoulders slightly hunched and his hands tucked in his pocket and his hair a windy mess. Sora didn't remember when it was taken or where, but she thought it captured his personality almost perfectly and she'd kept it.

She turned the frame down and examined her reflection in the mirror once more. She lined her eyes with grey, dusted her cheeks back to normalcy, and strung a necklace around her throat, hoping that it matched somewhat. One thing that hadn't changed for sure was her fashion sense, which was as lacking as ever. At least Mimi would recognize her for that.

She sighed, pulled the rubber band from her hair, and watched the auburn mass settle heavily on her neck and shoulders through the curtain of her fringe. Her hair had darkened a bit, become a little more orange and red and fall leaves, and, for the first time in her life, she had split ends. She examined a strand of hair critically, picking at the end, and then gave up, running a brush through her hair again to get out any new tangles, brushing her fringe down over her eyes, and slipping a hair tie around her wrist for later.

"You look good," Hyori said, standing behind her and putting her hands on Sora's shoulders. She tugged at the precarious neckline of Sora's dress and smiled at her in the mirror. "Really."

Sora shrugged, watching her collarbones jump under her skin in her reflection. "My feet will hurt tomorrow."

"At least it's Friday," Hyori reasoned, absentmindedly fingering the silver chain around Sora's neck. "You'll have fun."

Sora leaned back against Hyori's stomach and sighed heavily. "I feel pathetic."

"Don't."

"I still miss—"

"Come on, let's go! It's already eleven!"

Hyori smiled. "Aimee calls. C'mon, Sora-chan. I promise I'll buy you a drink there."

She extended her hand and Sora took it, pulling herself up and following Hyori out of the room. She shut the door on the way out.

**X**

The club was hot, overflowing with the silhouettes of writhing, dancing people as strobe lights flashed and bartenders mixed and poured drinks. Sora pushed up her sleeves and fanned herself with her hand, sipping her drink and wondering why she always let her roommates talk her into doing stupid things, like wandering the streets at eleven-thirty, staying up until three in the morning the day of a midterm, and flagrantly breaking rules, whoring around, and generally being…stupid.

Neither Aimee nor Hyori had any qualms about being promiscuous. Aimee was appeared to be the more conservative of the two, but at the same time she was proud of the fact that she lost her virginity at fifteen, that boys kissed her to forget things, and that she had tried almost every kind of drug she had access to. Hyori oozed sensuality and raw sex appeal, and yet she only gave the time of day of good-looking Korean boys. She preferred drunken sex to sober sex, didn't do drugs, and liked teasing more than anything else.

"Sora!"

A drunken Mimi looped her thin arms around Sora's neck and planted a sloppy kiss to Sora's cheek, giggling. "You look fabulous in that dress, darling. The lead singer of the band has been checking you out all night."

California had changed her best friend, of course. Sora was tired of change. She turned around to face Mimi and smiled widely, hoping that it was convincing. Mimi's hair was loose, board-straight, and gleamed pink in the precarious lighting. Her face was done up masterfully, as usual, and her cotton candy lips were stretched into a wide, happy, alcohol-tinged smile. She was dressed up in a barely-there shirt and an even less-existent skirt, and she moved fluidly to the music.

"I've missed you so much," Mimi gushed, setting her drink down and shimmying onto a barstool. "Tell me how you've been!"

"If you checked your email, you'd know." Sora downed her drink and signaled the bartender for a shot.

"You can't be mad at me, Sora-chan," Mimi wheedled, taking Sora's hand in hers. "You don't understand how fast life in Los Angeles goes. I've got classes and then my internship and friends to hang out with and parties. And it's not like I haven't called you."

"Once in the past two months."

Mimi pressed her lips together. "Well, since we're seeing each other after such a long time, why don't we make the best of it? I'm in town for—"

"—Three weeks, I know." Sora traced the rim of her glass idly.

"Are you going to give me the silent treatment the whole time?"

"Mimi…" Sora paused, and then threw her arms around her friend's shoulders. "I missed you so much. I don't know how I stayed sane."

"You've lost weight, Sora-chan," Mimi chided, laughing softly. "Your arms feel too thin."

"Your hair is pink," Sora shot back, crossing her arms over her stomach defensively.

"I know." Mimi twirled a strand of it around her index finger and smiled a bit more soberly. "Where's Aimee?"

"Dancing."

"With?"

"Some boy." Sora shrugged indifferently and downed her second shot.

"The band is playing soon."

"What's so special about the band? Hyori was talking about it before we left, and the only reason we came in the first place was—"

"You'll see," Mimi said, smiling slyly. "In the meantime, let's dance."

"Mimi, you know I don't dance."

"I've seen you move when you're drunk; don't give me any of that. You have the hips for it."

"I don't have hips."

"Well, your non-hips are dancing hips! Come on!" Mimi whisked the shot glass from Sora's hand and pulled her out on the dance floor, automatically swaying to the music and lifting her arms over her head.

"Your dress is a lot shorter than anything I remember you wearing before," Mimi said into Sora's ear as she moved to the beat. She bumped hips with Sora and looped an arm around Sora's waist. "Come on, Sora-chan. Work with me."

"Hyori chose it," Sora said, grudgingly swaying her hips and lifting her arms over her head.

"I like her taste. Do you know where she bought it? We should go shopping while I'm here. Your wardrobe probably looks the same as the last time I was here."

"Why would it change?" Sora raised an eyebrow, and Mimi sighed.

"Oh, darling, you only tease the ones you love."

Sora smiled a genuine smile.

"Have you talked to Yamato lately?" The music was steadily getting louder and faster and more frenetic, and Mimi was yelling into her ear to make herself heard. Sora winced and shook her head.

"I haven't talked to him since he left."

Mimi stopped moving, her arms falling to her sides and her expression incredulous. "What are you talking about? You told me last time I was here that you guys were talking regularly."

"I lied," Sora shrugged. She crossed her arms over her stomach and made her way back to the bar, signaling for another shot.

"That's an enormous lie, Takenouchi Sora. I can't believe this; we used to tell each other everything!"

"Did I tell you that we broke up—or rather, he broke up with me—before he left? I don't have any of his contact information, and I'm not going to beg around for it to initiate something that he's obviously not interested in having." Sora downed her shot and set the glass down on the bar.

"You've got too much ego."

"You told me once that I was jaded," Sora replied, with a wry twist to her half-smile.

"That too," Mimi said. She took Sora's hand once more and dragged her into the mob of people dancing, pulling her closer and closer to the stage. "Come on, the band is good; it's the only reason I told Aimee about it."

Sora followed her less-than-willingly, pushing her flapping skirt down as she tripped inelegantly over her heels behind Mimi.

A crowd was gathering in front of the dimly lit stage; a spiky-haired Japanese boy sat behind a set of drums, jiggling his leg and tapping his drumsticks together in a rather ADD-manner; the bassist was spinning on the spot in slow, steady circles; the guitarist (and presumably the lead singer) was brushing his fingers over the worn strings of his instrument and moving his lips soundlessly. Sora liked that they looked committed. She finger-combed her bangs out of her eyes and looked up at the guitarist's face, and froze.

"Mimi."

Mimi looked at her guiltily and closed her fingers around Sora's wrist in a sharp, vice-like grip as she gestured to the guitarist frantically. The club was suddenly swimming before Sora's eyes, green sparks played at the corners of her eyes, and she could hear Hyori calling her name.

"Mimi," Sora said, shaking the arm that her friend had in her grasp and trying to step away. "Mimi, let go."

"Sora?" Hyori peered at her over the heads of a couple that was dancing too close. "Sora, are you okay?"

Sora closed her eyes and cast her mind back to a time during her senior year, when Mimi, who had been stressed and ready to throw it all down, had dragged her to a club with Ayumi, the girl they had both previously hated until Mimi discovered her softer, less bitchy side. In that situation, Ayumi had taken the role Mimi had now: dragging Sora to meet a boy she didn't to and had no incentive to meet; Mimi had taken the role Hyori played now: the concerned friend who knew what was best for Sora.

"Sora, come on." Mimi tugged insistently at her wrist.

"Sora?" Hyori was only two steps away.

"Sora?"

Sora opened her eyes, and Ishida Yamato gazed back at her, his face impassive and stiff and his blue, blue eyes telling a completely different story.

"Yamato," she replied, shaking free from Mimi and rubbing her temples.

His features softened slightly as his lips strung up into a slightly rueful half-smile. "Did you know I was going to be here?"

Sora shook her head and looked at his face, the lights, his lips, Hyori's worried brown eyes, Mimi's expectant grin, and her aching feet, and she turned around and walked away from him, from her drunk, supposed best friend, and from her genuinely concerned new best friend.

"Sora!"

Sora walked faster, ruminating at the clicking noise her heels might have been making as she walked across the dance floor and to the red exit sign glowing over a pair of heavy doors. She heard Hyori swear loudly and warn Yamato off, Mimi bluster drunkenly, and when she chanced a look back, Yamato was back on stage, looking after her, Hyori was following her, and Mimi was tripping clumsily after Hyori.

She pushed through the doors, and the wintry night air cut through her skin and seeped straight to her bones. Old snow drifted around her feet as a cold breeze wound around her bare legs, and Sora fell into a crouch, hugging herself and folding defensively.

"Sora!"

Something heavy was draped over her shoulders, and Sora shivered against the warmth of her pea coat as Hyori smoothed her hair and murmured consoling nothings into her ear. She could hear sirens in the distance, the click-clack of Mimi's stilettos against the cold pavement, and she could feel Hyori's arm around her shoulders as she coaxed her up and into a cab.

Everything had changed, and his eyes were still so _blue_.

**A/N: I think it's been…more than six months? I owe all of you a huge apology, especially since I don't have a good excuse for not updating. I was just…lazy. And of course, I had that writer's block. I think a month back an idea leapt into my head, and I wrote seven pages of this chapter in maybe two hours. And then I had to wait for three weeks before the last three pages came to me. (is shot)**

**:D! So! Tell me what you think, eh? Is this transition too abrupt? Does the story not make sense at all? Should I just go climb a tree and stay up there? **

**Review, por favor! I'll love you all forever (not that I already don't). :)**

**Shizzle, it's been a long time. **


	9. Chapter 9

I own nothing.

**Symphony of Sound: Nine**

"Hey," Aimee said, pushing the door open and walking into Sora's room. She held out a mug of coffee. "Peace offering?"

"What did you do? I do? Huh?" Sora faltered incoherently, and Aimee laughed.

"I thought you wouldn't be too happy with me after the club thing yesterday." She smiled sheepishly.

Sora took the coffee with a groan. "You were in on that?"

"Only person who wasn't was Hyori. And you. Obviously," Aimee said. "She wasn't in the room when Mimi and I were talking."

Sora sighed. "I forgive you, I guess." She took a sip from the steaming cup and closed her eyes in reverential bliss.

"What are you doing?" Hyori asked, walking into the room, her boyfriend trailing idly behind her.

"Hey, Donghae," Aimee said. He smiled back cheerfully.

Aimee looked at her watch. "I've got the go," she said, standing up and stretching.

"Hot date?" Sora raised her eyebrow and Hyori looked up with interest.

"With the laundry machine, sure," Aimee quipped. She said bye to Donghae, blew a kiss to Hyori, and left.

"I should go too," Donghae said, taking both of Hyori's hands in his. He leaned forward and kissed her softly, smiled warmly at Sora, and exited. The door slammed, and Hyori sighed and fell forward into her bed, face-first into her pillow.

"I was never a romantic before this," she mumbled, and Sora laughed.

Donghae was Hyori's boyfriend of three months; she'd lent him her notes for a class he had missed, and it had progressed from that to study sessions in the library to getting coffee afterwards to him shyly offering her lunch on a Saturday afternoon. He had wide, brown eyes, messy black hair that stuck up in a bed head more often than not, and dimples when he smiled, which was often.

"When are you breaking up with him?" Sora asked, leaning back in her chair.

Hyori was notorious for two-week relationships that she initiated and then ended. Sometimes there was sex; other times, she simply kissed and held hands and acted like she was more in love than Sora thought possible. The end was always the same: Hyori would break up with the boy in his room, quietly, compassionately, and walk out before he could protest.

"Never," Hyori said, turning her head so she wasn't speaking into the pillow. "I want to keep him forever and just…keep him. Forever. He is the sweetest boyfriend I've ever had. It's like a fucking Korean drama. Except there's no other girl."

Sora laughed. "Sounds nice. I wouldn't know how it feels, but sounds nice."

Hyori sat up and looked at her intently. "And I've been meaning to ask you…"

Sora groaned. "Not so subtle segue into something completely unrelated?"

"No, it's related. And justified. You were a mess last night after you saw Yamato. Like, hysterical. You almost started hyperventilating, and you didn't want to get out of the cab, and I had to call Donghae to carry you up because the cabbie was getting pissed. And so I want to know. What the hell happened between you two?" Hyori moved to sit on Sora's bed, hugging a pillow to her chest and crossing her legs.

Sora was silent, studying her coffee cup.

"You have his picture on your desk and his sweatshirt on your bed, but you can't stand seeing him?"

"It's nothing," Sora finally muttered. "I cried?"

"Like a baby. Tears and snot. Kind of embarrassing. Justification would help this." Hyori grinned cajolingly.

"Did his eyes look abnormally blue?" Sora asked instead, looking down at her lap.

"They were gorgeous is what I noticed. No, seriously," Hyori said. "You guys also looked perfect together. I am jealous of his cheekbones and fingers. Even more than I am of yours."

Sora glared. "Please answer the question."

"Besides the fact that he's Japanese and he's naturally blond and blue-eyed, there is absolutely nothing wrong with him." Hyori licked her lips meaningfully, and Sora exploded with laughter.

"You have a boyfriend. He has equally nice cheekbones and I would kill to have eyes that brown."

"He's not that tall," Hyori whined, a goofy grin spreading across her face despite her words. "They're gorgeous, though, aren't they?"

"Like honey," Sora agreed, smiling back.

"Stop trying to distract me," Hyori said. "Tell me what happened to you two."

"He sent a demo to some label in Japan. They loved it. He told me he was leaving the night before, two weeks after we graduated. I haven't seen him since. Until last night," she amended.

"Are you angry with him?"

Sora sighed heavily. "I was. You remember me at orientation."

Hyori grimaced. "Man, you looked so stoned."

"I was recovering," Sora said defensively. "I missed spending proper time with all my other friends while I was moping. Mimi and I grew apart and then she left for California, and Taichi and I are just…We'll always be friends, but something changed after Yamato left.

"Anyway, he left, I had some kind of anger breakdown, and then a…sadness breakdown? I don't know. But I'm not angry with him anymore, I don't think. I just…miss him."

"Oh, baby," Hyori said sympathetically. "You should've seen the look in his eyes when he saw you. I don't think I've ever seen anyone look so…There were probably a million things going through his head when he saw you. And I don't think I've seen softer eyes on a puppy."

Sora buried her face in her hands. "Mimi gave me his number."

"Call him."

"I don't know what I'm expecting from any of this."

"Honey, I don't think that much will have changed."

Sora rubbed her face wearily. "I guess."

"Do you want me to call him for you?"

"No."

Hyori moved to rub a hand up and down Sora's back. "It'll work out."

**X**

Sora could remember when she was thirteen and lived in that ugly, cramped Tokyo apartment in the very middle of the city. It had been dirty, despite her mother's best efforts to scrub down the floors and walls of every single room, and it had been ridiculously noisy. The six months that she attended a public school there had been possibly the worst of her life; she didn't make any effort to make friends, choosing instead to eat lunch on the roof with an elementary English textbook. She dressed neatly, avoided making eye contact with her peers, and wrote letters to Yamato and Taichi and Hikari that were never sent.

She'd found those letters when she had gone home for dinner a week ago, to eat home-cooked food and sit on the couch with her mother like they never did when she was younger. She had been digging around in her room, which was very much the same as she had left it when she moved out, and found a second stack of yellowed envelopes with curling edges jammed in the back of a desk drawer. They were addressed in painstakingly scripted English letters, and Sora snorted at the effort she had put into forming words that now came so naturally her. She'd read through the stiff pages, laughing at the stories she told them and her professions of love and declarations of depression, and liked that she didn't sound as guarded as she had imagined herself to be.

She'd been tempted to rip the letters she'd written Yamato to shreds, but they had their sentimental value, and she stowed them away before she changed her mind. The letters she had received from him were in the same drawer, stacked neatly and looking as though they'd never been opened, and Sora had gone through and read every single one, trying to remember what she had written to him as she read through his patient, quiet (even on paper) responses. He had always answered any and all questions that she asked, whether she was joking or not (and he always knew when she was), telling her about stupid things that he knew she would appreciate and, in his own way, lifting her spirits phenomenally.

Her mother had walked in on her reading them, and she had hugged her with a muttered "Oh, Sora…" that Sora couldn't begin to understand.

"Are you leaving?" her mother had asked, as Sora buttoned her pea coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck and did all the things she used to do when she was leaving for school in the morning.

"Mmm."

"It's already ten, do you think you'll be all right?"

"I'll get a cab, Mama."

"All right," Toshiko said, though trepidation was scrawled across her face.

Sora had leaned forward and hugged her mother and kissed her on the cheek, something she hadn't done in a while. "I'll be fine, Mama. Promise."

Toshiko had smiled a close-lipped smile. "I wish Taichi was here. Even Yamato."

Sora had been stung by her mother's obvious disapproval of Yamato, even when he had been the one to make sure she didn't do stupid things when she was in one of her moods. Taichi was more likely to get her in trouble than anything, and Yamato was more likely to pull her (and occasionally Taichi) out of it. They dug holes, and he pulled them out and filled them up.

Maybe he could pull her out of this hole. Even if he had been the one to start digging it for her.

**X**

She called him on Monday afternoon. She stared at the scrap of paper clasped between her gloved fingers and then at her cell phone, in her other hand, and looked up at the grey sky. The wind carded through her hair, lifting strands of it into the air and whipping it back into her face, and Sora spluttered indignantly, raking it back from her face violently.

Mimi had left the paper on her desk the morning after the club incident, along with a note explaining that all this time, she had booked a hotel room to stay in during her time back. Her parents had moved back to Odaiba the first chance they got, and Mimi didn't like taking favors from other people, especially when she could help herself.

She flipped the phone over in her hands a couple times before sighing, mentally steeling herself, and punching the number in. She hit the call button before she could change her mind, and pressed the phone to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Hi," Sora said hesitantly.

"Who is this?"

"You honestly don't know?" Sora switched to Japanese and hoped she didn't sound as desperate as she felt.

There was a pause on the other end, and Sora could hear Yamato's even breath grow ragged at the edges.

"Sora?"

She wasn't sure if she was imagining the crack in his voice.

"Yeah."

"Mimi gave me your number," Sora said, after a painfully long moment of silence. "She said I should call you before you went back to…Japan."

"Oh."

"How have you been? Did your band make it big?"

"Yeah, I guess we did." Sora could see him in her mind's eye, carding his fingers through his hair, with a solemn and somewhat harassed expression on his face. He would be standing, of course, wearing that one pair of jeans that had always fit him perfectly and one of the many long-sleeved T-shirts that had been hanging in his closet for as long as Sora could remember. He would be skinnier than she remembered, but that was a given, because he had been battling for a reputation in the music industry for the past two years, and food became an afterthought in the face of money and eternal fame. His English was slightly more accented and his voice was a bit huskier, deeper to the edges, but his Japanese was the same, smooth and fluid as always.

"Can we talk? Unless you don't want to—you don't really want to be talking to me, do you."

"No, yeah, we can meet. That's fine. I'm just—that's fine. Do you want my address?"

"You want to meet at your place?"

"If that's okay with you. We can meet at a Starbucks or something if you want."

"No, your place is fine. Will you text me your address later?"

"As soon as we hang up."

"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"Bye, Sora."

"Yeah." Sora flipped the phone shut with a snap and slid it into her pocket. She sighed, adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder, and began walking back to her room.

**X**

"What are you going to wear?" Mimi asked, spinning around in Sora's desk chair that night as Sora sat on the floor, taking notes on a reading she had for her philosophy class.

"Whatever I decide to put on tomorrow morning," Sora said indifferently, closing the notebook and standing up to put it away. She put the book back on top of the stack leaning against her desk and grimaced when Mimi looked at her pointedly. "What?"

"Shouldn't you wear something nice?"

"For what, going to his apartment?"

"Seeing him after two years!"

"I'm the same person I was two years ago, Mimi."

"No one is ever the same after two years."

"Well, I have somehow managed it." She looked at her friend pointedly as she picked up another text and notebook, and settled back on the floor with a highlighter and pencil.

"I think you should wear that one sweater I gave you for Christmas."

"The white and blue one?" Sora didn't look up from her notebook.

"With the V-neck. With skinny jeans and ballet flats."

"Um, right." Sora looked up and smiled at Mimi. "Try regular jeans and Chucks."

"Fine," Mimi said, sighing wearily. "I give up on you, Sora."

"Choose your battles," Sora murmured softly, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looking back down at her notebook.

"Don't I know it," Mimi said wryly. "I'm going. I have a dinner date with Hikari."

"Are they on break yet?"

"Sometime soon," Mimi replied. "High school was so weird, don't you think?"

"Tell her I say hi," Sora said, instead of answering the question.

"Bye, Sora."

**X**

Sora could remember, quite vividly, the first time she met Yamato (and Mimi and Jyou and Koushiro and Takeru). The other four had been nothing remarkable; Mimi was whiny and naïve; Jyou was a self-proclaimed hypochondriac, which Sora had thought a lame excuse for being annoyingly paranoid; Koushiro had been quiet and so absorbed with his laptop that Sora had wondered why he hadn't gone to some sort of technology camp; and Takeru had been adorable and hero-worshipped Yamato.

Yamato, on the other hand, had been enigmatic, impossible to read, and quietly removed from the rest of the campers. He had been ferociously protective of Takeru, a bit antagonistic to Taichi, and otherwise indifferent to everyone else. During camp activities, he would take the job that required the least social interaction, and that hadn't changed when they initially landed in the Digital World. He had changed quickly, of course, but Sora had never been sure if that was because he was worried about the well-being of the group and thus assumed a position of leadership, or if he had simply liked pissing Taichi off.

He had warmed to Sora over the next few weeks in that new world, but Sora figured that sleeping caves and trekking across vast wastelands under the hot sun was the reason for the deep connection the seven (eight, when Hikari came along) forged during their time together. Sora had suffered from mild cases of insomnia back then, and Yamato was prone to playing his harmonica instead of sleeping, and so she would creep out of the cave (tent, grass, tree) they were all sleeping in and sit with him, listen to the straining notes of the harmonica, and sometimes whisper her secrets into her hands when she thought he wasn't listening. He never seemed to mind.

They stayed close after they got back to Odaiba, but that was probably because they kept seeing each other for various missions and the one time they had saved the world. Sora was sure that had they met under different circumstances, they would never have become friends. She did like how things turned out, in any case.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, and Sora stepped out slowly when she realized the there were people waiting to enter. The doors slid shut behind her, and the hallway stretched before her, long and brightly lit. Yamato was staying in a hotel much nicer than what Sora had expected, given that he was a newly minted rock star on tour in the U.S. for the first time.

His room was at the end of the hall. Her feet sunk into the deep carpet as she walked, and Sora suddenly felt self-conscious of her battered Chucks and the ragged hems of her jeans trailing behind her. She stopped in front of door 576, stared at the oak and gold knocker and the other end of the peephole, and raised her hand to lift the knocker when the door swung open and Yamato looked down at her.

"Hi."

**A/N: -ducks tomatoes- I know, guys, it's been forever since I last updated. Something like five months, right? -doesn't bother to check- I'd like to apologize for that. I've been busy with college apps and the assload of work teachers have decided to pile on me, and I swear this story has been at the back of my mind, jumping up and down and demanding attention. I finally had some time this weekend (heh, "**_**time**_**"), and I wrote this all in maybe two hours with a BURST OF CREATIVITY CHYEAH.**

**I'm sorry to all the people that don't like the segue into their college years. I just couldn't come up with some sort of continuation after Taichi emoed at the end of the seventh chapter. I needed to jumpstart it some way, ne? I hope Sora's conversation with Hyori helped clarify some stuff (yeah, right, way to be general). I promise there will be more detail later! Think of this as Part II of **_**Symphony of Sound**_**, a continuation of the incomplete Part I. **

**Again, super sorry that I didn't update for so long. Idk, guys. Idk. I'll try and update sometime around Christmas, if I get inspiration by then. Until then, happy reading, and please tell me what you think. :) Reviews make me the happiest person in the world and will cheer me up tons when all my colleges reject me. D:**

**Love!**


	10. Chapter 10

I own nothing.

**Symphony of Sound: Ten**

The hotel room was everything that a hotel room should be: clean, comfortable, and nothing like home. Sora sank into one of those obligatory floral-patterned couches and pulled her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. The walls were papered and painted, the carpet was dark and thick, and the coffee table in front of her was polished and gleaming. There was a wooden cabinet against the wall, which she guessed hid a TV, next to a window curtained with long, neat drapes. The kitchenette was small, but still managed to contain a refrigerator, stove, microwave, sink, and some meager counter space.

A glass of water appeared in front of her, and she took it silently, looking at Yamato over the rim of the cup as she sipped.

"Have you never been in a hotel before?" Yamato asked, raising an eyebrow. "They're all the same."

"I have," Sora said quietly, leaning forward to set the glass on the coffee table. "Where's the rest of your band?"

"On a flight back to Japan," Yamato replied, sitting down in the armchair across from her.

"How come you didn't go with them?"

He shrugged. "I wanted to see Takeru; maybe my dad."

"Oh." Then, "Do you still talk to him?"

"Sometimes. Haven't really made a point of keeping in touch with—"

"Anyone?"

"You sound bitter," Yamato said, sitting forward and looking at her keenly.

Sora merely looked at him.

"The only person I kept in touch with was Takeru," Yamato replied. "I didn't tell Mimi that I was going to be playing at the club, and I didn't ask her to bring you. I figured you wouldn't want to see me."

"I know," Sora muttered. She hugged her folded legs closer to her chest and rested her forehead on her kneecaps. "God, I don't even know what I'm doing here. Mimi said you still care about me but I don't see that at all and I—I'm so messed up."

"I'm sorry," Yamato said.

"No, it would've happened eventually," Sora said. "I guess you were just a good catalyst. I don't sleep anymore, did you know that? I have glasses, too. I don't think I've gotten a haircut in at least six months, I haven't seen Taichi in at least three, and I'm a journalism major." When she looked up, Yamato was looking back at her with what she would have mistaken as impassiveness if she hadn't known him so well. His eyes were bluer than sorrow. Sora swallowed the lump in her throat and struggled to speak around it. "I don't think I'm friends with Mimi the way I used to be and I'm not taking care of Hikari like I promised Taichi I would. Jyou's getting married soon, and Koushiro's having trouble because he's dating a twin and the other one has a massive crush on him." She could feel her smile quiver when she looked up at him again. "Takeru got accepted early decision to Duke, did he tell you? He's probably going to get a basketball scholarship or something. Mimi's got some ritzy internship in L.A. and only calls once a month."

Sora blinked and a tear dripped down her cheek and fell, splotching heavily on her jeans. "You douchebag, do you know how much you've missed?"

He pulled her into a hug before she had the chance to realize that he had moved. Threaded his long guitar fingers through her hair, pulled her crushingly close, and let her press her face into his chest. She didn't cry, simply sat there, tumbled against him.

"I'm sorry," she heard him mutter, and she thought that she heard his voice break a little, a thin crack through his low, smooth baritone.

"I had three months to get over it," Sora mumbled into the material of his sweatshirt. "I didn't cry after the night that you told me. Hyori said I looked like a zombie on the first day of orientation."

"You still do," Yamato replied. He slid the hand that wasn't tangled in her hair down her side, fingers rising and falling over the bumps of her ribs and the ridges of her spine. "You've lost weight."

"That's what everyone says," Sora said, pulling back and wiping her face with the sleeves of her sweater. "I think my mother hates you now."

"My own mother hates me now," Yamato replied with a wry twist to his smile. "I can't say I blame either of them."

There was a used glass and a half-empty bottle of scotch on the kitchenette counter, and Yamato followed her gaze.

"Still too good for drugs, Sora-chan?" He laughed dryly and slid his hand out of her hair, slowly.

"Not alcohol," Sora replied.

He looked at her appraisingly. "Did you have any other boyfriends?"

"Will I be damaged goods if I did?" Sora smiled wryly.

She remembered that Taichi had kissed her the day he left for Chicago. She had gone to the airport with his family; Mimi had already left for California. They had all walked Taichi to his gate (after negotiating with the security guards) and his parents had kissed him goodbye and made him promise to call them once a week, and Hikari had hugged him and wished him luck, and then the three had walked off, asking Sora to meet them in the food court when she was done.

She had hugged Taichi and handed him the care package she had put together that morning, and then he had pulled her into another hug that had been closer and not so platonic, and then he had kissed her. It hadn't been anything invasive: a peck on the lips and then a cheeky, somewhat apologetic smile.

"I'm not Mimi," Sora had said afterwards, crossing her arms over her stomach.

"I'm over her," Taichi had replied, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the vinyl floor. "Are you mad? I know the whole thing about Yamato…"

"Did he tell you he was leaving? Was I the only one he didn't tell?"

Taichi had reached out and adjusted the strap of her tank top, brushed a lock of her hair out of her eyes. "I don't think he told anyone until after he told you. Woke me up at one in the fucking morning."

"He told me at 12:30," Sora had confided, sighing. She fingered the frayed hems of her shorts. "I miss him, Taichi."

"You're over thinking this, Sora-chan," Taichi had said, sighing also.

"I miss you, too, and you're not even gone yet."

"Sora-chan…" Taichi had taken her hands in his—his skin was a healthy bronze, in contrast to her gold—and looked her in the eyes. "I promise to visit you whenever I come back here. I'll email you everyday and call you every other day and it'll be like I never left."

"We can't play soccer over the phone," Sora said petulantly, appreciating that he was humoring her uncharacteristic childishness.

"That means I'll have to visit more often, ne?"

"You better."

"No hard feelings?"

"About what, the kiss?"

"Yeah."

"Mmm…nope. Just don't do it again."

He had laughed. "See you later, Sora."

She had gone out with two boys during her freshman year under Hyori and Aimee's collective insistence. One boy was someone Hyori knew through a family friend back in Korea; his name was Shiwon and he had been the sweetest, most gentlemanly boy Sora had ever met. They got bored of each other after two months, and the break had been clean and mutual. They still spoke when they had the time. The other boy had been a classmate of Aimee's in high school; his name was Killian, and he had dark green eyes and long, long legs. They had gone out on two dates before deciding that they couldn't stand to be around one another.

"Yeah," Sora said to Yamato. "I dated a little."

The set of Yamato's jaw tensed and his eyes became steely.

"Oh, did you not do anything when you were Japan being a rock star?" Sora shot back, glaring. "Don't look at me like that, Yamato. You're no saint." She stood up, dug around in her coat pockets for her gloves. "I really don't know why I came here, because this sure as hell isn't any sort of closure."

"Wait," he said, standing with her.

"What." She wound her scarf around her neck and began pushing buttons through their respective holes.

"Let's meet sometime. Later. I might be leaving in three weeks."

"Might?"

"It depends."

"On what?" Sora raised an eyebrow.

"A lot of things." Yamato held her gaze until she looked away. She saw him grinning out of the corner of her eye.

Sora fixed him with the coldest glare she could manage. "We'll see."

**X**

Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket and Sora groaned, leaning back in her chair to pull it out. She flipped it open and pressed it to her ear without checking the screen, tossing out a careless "Moshi moshi?"

"You're lucky I'm Japanese."

"Who is this?" Sora asked irritably, raking her fingers through her hair and taking her glasses off, rubbing her eyes.

"Don't remember me?"

"Shi—Taichi!"

"Kind of insulted here, Takenouchi."

"You haven't been back in over three months; excuse me for not remembering a stranger."

"Shut up. Why don't you come visit me here?"

"No thank you."

"See? That attitude…"

"Shut up, Yagami."

"Make me."

The statement hung heavily in the air for a few seconds before they both burst into laughter. Sora leaned back, propping her feet up on her desk and closing her eyes.

"So…what're you wearing?"

Sora burst out laughing again. "Pervert. Get a girlfriend."

"Well, see, there's this one girl that I'm crazy about, but she's already taken."

"Is that some poorly masked euphemism for me or Mimi?"

"So self-centered, and I'm way over Mimi. There's this girl in my econ class."

"What's her name?"

"Sayuri. Man, Sora, she's gorgeous and smart and nice and she knows all the answers to everything."

"Bring her with you the next time you visit."

"We're not exactly going out. She says she's glad I'm her friend."

"Taichi."

"But she doesn't have a boyfriend, so I have a shot."

Sora laughed and pushed her foot against the desk, rolling back and hitting her bed. "What else?"

"Hikari got into NYU."

"She didn't tell me that!"

"She also said Yamato's visiting. She went with Takeru to see him."

"That's…nice of her."

"Sora…"

"Taichi, is this the reason you called?"

"I wanted to make sure you were doing okay!" His voice was indignant.

"I'm fine, then."

"Sure."

"I'm telling the truth. I went to see him yesterday and it was all good."

"He said you cried."

"You talked to him?"

"He's my friend too," Taichi replied coolly.

"Sorry."

"I also called to tell you that my flight lands at ten in the morning on Sunday and that I don't have a ride from the airport or anyone to split cab fare with."

Sora scoffed. "You're too kind to me."

"Will you be there?"

"What else do I have to do at ten in the morning this Sunday? That's rhetorical, by the way."

"Good. I'll email you the flight information later. I've gotta go. Getting coffee with Sayuri." Sora could hear the smile in his voice.

"Bring her with you."

"She lives in Jersey. We'll visit her."

Sora laughed. "Bye, Taichi."

"Bye, Sora-chan."

"I miss you," Sora said, but he had already hung up. She flipped the phone shut and placed it on her desk, and stared out the window.

**X**

Hikari and Takeru were in their last year of high school, but Sora felt like a ridiculous mother that couldn't let go in that she could still remember when they had been nine, naïve, and scared. Hikari had clung to Sora when Taichi and Yamato were fighting and felt like she didn't know her own brother anymore, though this was the case in both the real world and the Digital world. Takeru had been tearful and silent during those times, and Sora could see him trying to be strong in front of the other boys when he refused to seek comfort in her hugs. She had stayed up plenty of times those same nights petting his hair as he cried into his sweatshirt and muttered about how he didn't want to be here and see Yamato when he was angry. Yamato was usually awake during those times, tucked into a dark corner with raw sadness painting his face. Sora never knew what to say to him after Takeru fell asleep with puffy eyes and tear tracks trailing down cheeks that slowly faded from red to tan. Yamato was always silent. She offered him comfort the only way she knew, by tugging at his arm until he lay down, head pillowed on her thigh, as she combed her fingers through his hair, humming softly, until his face relaxed and body slackened and he fell asleep. There was a young desperation to his features, even when he was sleeping, and Sora never knew what to do.

Takeru had shaped up to be a shockingly open and cheerful person, a jarring contrast to his brooding, private brother. Hikari was as cheerful as Taichi and quite well adjusted, but then again, she just had that sort of personality.

Hikari had called her two hours after her conversation with Taichi to tell her about NYU and how she was definitely going and she couldn't wait until Friday because she would be able to see Sora in person. Sora had told her, quietly, about her date with Yamato, at which point Hikari laughed.

"You vowed never to speak to him again, Sora-chan," she said lightly. "I've never known you to go back on your word."

"What are you talking about. I'm the biggest liar in the world."

"Shut up, Sora-chan. You have such bad self-image." She giggled suddenly.

"What?"

"No, nothing. Takeru sent me this email…"

"I better be a bridesmaid."

"What?"

"Your wedding."

"Oh." Sora could hear the blush spreading across Hikari's face, could see Hikari shifting uncomfortably in her seat. "Sora-chan…"

"Hmm?"

"I actually have a question."

"Ask away." Sora reached for her cup of ramen noodles and a pair of chopsticks, mixing the cold noodles and scooping some up.

"Did you and Yamato…you know. Do it?"

Sora gagged, coughing and hitting her chest. Hyori looked up questioningly, and Sora shook her head.

"Excuse me?"

"Don't lecture me, Sora-chan. Takeru and I have been together officially for two years, but you know much history we have."

"You're seventeen!"

"Are you going to tell me to wait for marriage?" Hikari's voice was mocking and vaguely reminiscent of her own.

"No. Just…wait until you're out of high school, Hikari. Make sure he uses a condom. Get the freaking pill. I don't know. Did you talk to Taichi about this?"

"Obviously not. If you're freaking out about it this much, what do you think my brother will do?"

"Castrate him."

"It would be worse than that," Hikari said grimly. "But Sora, I know I love him and want to be with him forever. Eternity. Infinity. I know it's cheesy, but…"

"No, it's sweet. Nice and idealistic. The world needs more love like yours."

"Yeah…"

"Where is he?"

"He's at basketball practice," Hikari said. "I'm doing homework. We're going out later."

"Your dad lets you?"

"He's not nearly as overprotective as Taichi."

Sora laughed. "I've got to go. You're not mad at me for backing out on you, are you?"

"I think Yamato should be first priority right now," Hikari said. "Please fix things with him."

"I know," Sora murmured.

"I'll talk to you later, Sora-chan."

"Bye."

"Bye."

**X**

"Yamato?"

"Hey, Sora."

"Friday."

"What?"

"Friday," Sora repeated impatiently. "Friday night, seven o'clock, you choose the restaurant. You said you wanted to meet, right?"

There was a considerable silence on the other end before Yamato spoke. "Sounds good. I'll text you later?"

"Fine. Oh, and," Sora added, before he could hang up, "this isn't for you."

His laugh was soft and pulled at Sora's battered heartstrings. "I know."

"All right. I'll see you later…Yama."

"Bye, Sora-chan."

**A/N:** **HAE GAIZ. I'm so so so so so so sorry for this super-long hiatus, because what is this fuckery. The last…almost year (-dodges tomatoes-) has been super busy, though, with college apps and APs and such, and I've been working on some original fiction for a writing contest. But! It's the summer! And it turns out I haven't forgotten about this fic. ) I just hope all you lovely readers haven't, either. Feedback, please. Let me know if you like the direction that this story is going in. **

**And, yes. Comments make me smile. :)))**


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